What Changes, What Remains
by Tell Me You're Not Hydra
Summary: Jemma will not call these things zombies. Zombies belong only in ridiculous science fiction movies that refuse to comply with reality and reason. These things are not zombies, can't be zombies, because they exist in real life.
1. Chapter 1

They should be dead.

This is a fact that neither of them voice when stumbling through graveyards of cars packed tightly together for mile after decaying mile. The deaths of hundreds (thousands, her mind corrects itself as she gingerly pulls a stained backpack out of a bony grip, or millions) have allowed for innumerable supplies to be spread out in mass graves just like this one, left ripe for scavengers to pick through if they were granted the luck and time to do so. Non-perishables hide away in nooks and crannies underneath clothing and corpses alike.

The hinges of car doors wheeze loudly enough for Jemma to wince and freeze every time she goes to search another backseat for supplies. Items that might've been trash for others generally are useful for her and Fitz. They're very clever, the two of them. No point in modesty. Then again, the people who are so picky as to ignore the potential uses of anything they might find are probably dead. Possibly worse. Very likely worse. It doesn't matter now. Whatever they're condition, they've left thing behind for others to scrape together so that they may continue living.

A loud clang snatches her attention from rifling through a lucky bag of medications (ibuprofen, acetaminophen and codeine, naproxen). Fitz immediately flashes her an apologetic grimace before returning to his work of collecting this and that from various abandoned electronics. He does this more to keep his mind sharp than to create anything wildly useful. There are skills stored away in his mind that might begin to degrade if he doesn't keep them in practice. Neither of them are sincerely convinced that this will be a problem but it keeps them both busy. Discussing whatever device he's managed to put together takes their minds away from the rest of the world for a few precious hours.

His projects give them both reasons to continue on from day to day. At this point, they'll take whatever they can get for motivation. Her hair is slicked against her grimy cheek; it only just moves when she swipes at it with the heel of her palm to try to get it out of her eyes. Maybe she'll be able to find a couple of hair ties soon. Fitz has suggested that she just cut it but she hasn't been able to bring herself to do so. Something about it feels a lot like giving up more than she wants to of the person she used to be.

Her hair, dirty and unkempt as it is, has clung to her back when she's stepped out of hot showers following workouts at the gym when she used the water to try to work out particularly tricky problems; it's swung in front of her face when she's studied at the university's library with Fitz by her side; it's been tied back neatly during hours upon hours of scribbling down notes and recording observations; it's been pushed out of her eyes by Fitz when she's spilled tears over stress or a broken heart. It's just hair, Fitz tells her, but it's more than that in a stupid, nonsensical way. Every day, that life slips from her more and more.

She knows that she'll need to let go eventually but she can't bring herself to. Not just yet. Her stubbornness keeps her hair plastered to her skin under the sun's challenging glare. Sweat has already dampened her tank top to the point that she's given up on trying to tug it away from her flesh. She tugs it again needlessly. It doesn't make the sensation of wet fabric any more pleasant.

"Simmons, found some medical supplies. Looks like they're intact enough, eh?" Fitz holds out the off-white plastic box, a small smile telling her that he's proud of himself for the small treasure. Jemma returns the smile just for a heartbeat, gently pulling the precious supplies from his grasp to stuff into the backpack along with her other discoveries. The shallow rattle of items bumping together reminds her of just how little there is. Medicine and bandages only serve a purpose if they're alive long enough to use them. And staying alive? Jemma breathes out slowly and wearily, rubbing droplets of perspiration from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Staying alive demands that they find enough food to keep them going.

Two days. It's been two hot, long days since they ran through their final can of beans. They're not hunters. Right now as her stomach cramps in protest to the energy she's exerting in her search, she's sorely regretting that gaping hole in her knowledge. The stream that their camp is near is only useful for quick trips of gathering water to boil once they're safely within the four walls of their hideaway so fishing isn't really a great option either. It's not like they have the equipment for that anyway.

"Fitz?" Jemma calls softly and suddenly. The clinking of metal against metal immediately stops and Fitz's head pops out to peer at her from the side of an open car hood.

"What?" He asks.

"We should head back soon." She answers hoarsely. Enough time has been spent together during his high points and low that she knows he's disappointed. He's not going to complain though. She thanks him with a gentle squeeze to his shoulder as she passes by to check another car. He shrugs. She doesn't say anything else about it.

The next car brings nothing of note. She splays her fingers out against the hot blue metal as though that will somehow encourage the next trunk to give her something to help them carry on for the next few days. Ramen, canned goods, candy bars, protein bars. At this point she'd be relieved to even find a can of overheated soda rolling around on the floor. It'd be better than nothing. A churning grumble from her stomach breaks through her thoughts to jostle her back into searching. Another car, black, empty. Another car, blue, empty. Another car, lighter blue, empty.

What a nice pattern of disappointment.

As much of a supply depot as these pile-ups can be, it doesn't make the process of actually _finding_ the things that they need any easier. The things that they need are around if only they are given the opportunities to find them. Right now, with a sinking stab in her gut, she thinks that it's a better idea to go home. It feels like they've pressed their luck enough for the day. It's only a matter of time before they find themselves in a situation that they can't escape. They've survived this long by erring on the side of caution. Always.

Caution and, well, each other. That they're both still breathing is as much a miracle as it is a tragedy. Without Fitz, Jemma gently raps her knuckles against the hood of the car he's scavenging from, she'd have given up on the world long ago. Opting out would have been far too simple a decision to make. As it is, Fitz is alive and so she is too. There is no Simmons without Fitz. No Fitz without Simmons.

She remembers the first time she saw him as clearly as she sees him wiping dirty hands across his cheeks right now. Considering that they were both younger than the rest of their classmates in their respective programs, it was easy if not expected for the pair of them to gravitate to each other. Barely seventeen and both expected to get their doctorates earlier than anyone else.

Jemma had been in the library gathering textbooks for assignments that she wanted to get done early when she'd gone right by his table. He'd been alone but that was expected. She'd spent a lot of that first semester sequestered away from other people as well. It was easier. It had just been a split-second hesitation but she'd paused right next to his table and then promptly decided that it couldn't hurt to introduce herself. So, she had. She'd cleared her throat, stuck out her hand with a bright smile and promptly launched into a discussion with him over a prototype of a battery he'd been designing right next to his text book.

From that point on their classmates quickly paired them together to the point that the practice of simply addressing them as a single entity became commonplace when they wanted to talk about this or that. They were (they are) Fitzsimmons. Callie Hannigan, an older student, had been the first one to use the name to their faces when she wanted to talk about a project to the both of them and seemed to have just slipped out with it. Fitz had flushed while Jemma had just been confused and asked about it. It was quicker, Callie had said with an airy wave of her hand, to just say Fitzsimmons than to address them separately.

The words that he wants to say hang between them though he keeps his tongue in check during the long trek back to camp. Once they're safe they can start talking again. Until then they have to keep as quiet as possible. The rest of the world fills in the gaps where their conversation would have otherwise been. Birds rustle through leaves and tweet to each other, insects buzz and chirp (mosquitoes hum loudly in their ears no matter how much they swat), animals disturb the leaves with hooves and paws around them. Funny how the last months have more or less ripped away their fear of humans. Rabbits and does fearlessly walk around them every time they come venturing out.

"—mons. _Jemma_!"

A chill rushes down her spine, her feet won't rise off of the detritus under her worn shoes and all she can do is stare, wide-eyed, back at Fitz. She hears it now. Stupid, she thinks as she presses her clammy palms against her thighs, so stupid that she hadn't caught it before.

It's barely more than low rattling at first. Could be mistaken as some random sound of little importance but that would be the last mistake someone would make if they were on their own. The rattle mutates horrendously and rapidly, a loud snarling sort of groan. The wretched moans come like a warning long before the shuffling footsteps are close enough to be heard. (Sometimes she sits and watches them, listens to their moans from her safe place in their camp, and wonders just how they're capable of such unearthly sounds. She daren't study them. Never, not even in her nightmares.)

Those footsteps were once so easily mistaken for exhausted or drunken students banging around the corridors of the apartment building. The early days (the days long gone to never return) had found her lounging at her desk, flipping through her notes. Studies upon studies had piled up before her to be sorted through. Some were good, some cited outdated information, some had good data with bad results, some had good results with vague data. Being a teaching assistant had come with its own set of trials.

Fitz, pale and trembling, has fisted his knife's handle and is staring in the direction the sound is coming from. Rattling, moaning, rattling, growling. Closer, closer, closer. Bile rushes up her throat just to be forcefully swallowed back down no matter how much she wants to just empty her stomach. There's nothing to speak of to actually vomit up but it still feels like too much. She knows that panic is making her body want to expel any dead weight so she can run. Her instincts want her to run.

Jemma jerks back to herself; she throws her hand out to catch Fitz's shoulder and prevent him from moving. Listen closely, she tries to tell him with her wide eyes, we can't risk doing this right now. Sure enough, he seems to catch on at the faint sound of a second pair of shuffling steps. She shakes her head slowly. Her finger presses to her lips. He nods. They wait. It's all that they can do.

Jemma will not call these things zombies. A zombie brings to mind ludicrous make-up and Halloween costumes. A zombie is all unhinged jaws, grasping fingers, gnashing teeth, and decaying flesh. While these things may very well share some of these qualities there's nothing to say that they should have that particular name. Zombies belong only in ridiculous science fiction movies that refuse to comply with reality and reason. They should only be seen when one is reclining on the couch with a friend, a bowl of popcorn and plenty of time to burn through. They're supposed to be left open for inane discussions and laughter with the few other friends she has (had) apart from Fitz on movie nights.

These things are not zombies, can't be zombies, because they exist in real life. They've grabbed onto her friends, ripped open flesh, pulled out intestines while she's staggered backwards; they've caused screaming in her wake while she's fled to save herself. They've spilled liters of blood that she's slipped in while pleading hands have grasped at her ankles for help. They'd been the reason she found Fitz with blood spattered across his face when he'd come scrambling to search for her.

The state government (hell, even the entirety of the United States government) had recommended quarantine long past the point of being able to realistically implement it. To her, it felt like the world had come crashing down all at once. In retrospect, the world had begun crumbling in the weeks preceding the absolute collapse with just a few odd reports here and there that nobody noticed. In the end, none of that added up to anything of great importance. Even with that knowledge, she still feels like all of the countries were brought to their knees at once. Accusations of biological warfare flew from the States to North Korea, from China to Australia, from Canada to Russia, from Syria to Brazil. If any one country had been responsible, however, it hadn't made their people immune from their monster.

Everyone fell like dominoes. One after the other. First to stop contact as far as she knows was Italy. From there the silence seemed to spread like a necrotic wound, rotting away at the world's communication until nothing but static remained. Diseases had acted quickly in the past but none quite like this one. Humanity has always bounced back before this. There have always been vaccines to discover and weaknesses to exploit.

Bombs had leveled some cities while napalm scorched the streets of others to no avail. Humanity had thrown their best punches only to be swallowed whole by sheer numbers. It's only to be expected. Even now, she wonders how no one realized that the more people that were inefficiently killed, the more things would rise up in their places to add to the problem. Armies killed, people died, corpses came back. The armies were overrun. Politicians were no more shielded than the everyman. Governmental leaders fell. Without leaders, the governments followed.

And now here they are, holding their breath like it'll protect them from detection. Jemma's hand finds Fitz's. Their fingers tangle together like a lifeline. She's grateful beyond anything she can express. She settles for squeezing gently. Feeling him shaking as much as she is has a strangely comforting effect. He never leaves her alone in her fear. He's always with her. Her lungs fill a little less harshly while they wait and forcing herself to listen beyond the blood surging in hear ears is easier. Shuffle, moan, shuffle, growl. It's a long process of staying still and silent until it's safe to assume that they can leave.

The moment the sounds are far enough that they can't hear shuffling, Jemma stumbles out of their hiding place first and pulls Fitz behind her. They wind their way through the familiar underbrush on a path just barely being worn into the forest from their routine outings. The contents of the salvaged backpack looped over her shoulder clinks more loudly than she would like. She adjusts it but isn't about to stop to move things around. Fitz pulls in front of her to take the lead. He freezes as the forest begins to thin and give way to gravel.

Jemma warily draws to a halt, pausing right at his side. It just another couple of minutes of walking and they'll be home free. A couple of hours of relative safety is better than nothing. Fitz glances behind them, fidgeting, and then steps out gingerly as to not disturb the stones underfoot too much. Silence greets them.

She bounces on the balls of her feet restlessly, scanning around them, while Fitz unwraps the chains from the door handle and pushes it open so that they can slip inside. It feels like it's been ages since she was last able to just close her eyes and breathe in for a few seconds. The heavy rustling of chains tells her that Fitz is securing the door behind them.

There had once been a time when she would have gladly refused to enter a building like this. Musty with hard, cracked concrete floor and an upper level with cracked windows that've littered broken glass hazardously on the ground; the warehouse is a disaster waiting to happen. One fall from the ladder extending up to the loft overlooking everything else could end in broken bones while a slip-up on the loft itself might call for stitches or a tetanus shot.

Right now? Right now this place is as close to heaven as they can hope for. In this world, a cleared building with a whole floor of heavy, locked loading dock doors that are made up of an inch of steel are a godsend. It's a miracle if Jemma's ever witnessed one that they've managed to find this place unoccupied and able to be easily secured against entry. She and Fitz sleep up on the loft because it's only accessible via the ladder. As far as they know, none of these things have demonstrated a propensity for climbing anything let alone ladders.

"Find anything interesting, Fitz?" Jemma finally speaks properly. Fitz is audibly rummaging through his haul for the day. She smiles, falling back on her raggedy blanket. She curls her fingers against the worn fabric. Save for having an endless supply of canned goods, it really can't get much better than this. Sure, it can be a bit drafty up here during the night but it's far preferable to have the breeze than to be continually exposed to the sun's mercilessness. Even since she was a child she's never been a huge fan of what she deems as too much heat.

She rolls her sore shoulders, arches her back off of the ground until she hears a satisfying series of cracks and groans softly from the relief of it. Her muscles are aching from being bent over inside of cars all day. What she wouldn't give for a legitimate bed. How long has it been since she's been stretched out on an actual mattress? Her thoughts drift idly to the fleeting memory of being young and curled up between her parents. Her father used to rub her back while her mother played with her hair. It'd always done the trick to get her right to sleep no matter how determined she was to stay up late just like a grown-up.

The sharp prickling of her eyes tells her it's too much to linger on. Jemma pulls herself out of that dangerous territory to focus on Fitz.

"Do you have to do—yes, right, never mind." Fitz mutters, shifting through this and that to sort out the components that he wants the most. "I, eh, found a couple of radio parts and some useful wiring. You know, if we could find solar panels I'd probably be able to find enough bits here and there to hook us up some electricity."

"To do what with?" Jemma reluctantly opens her eyes, twisting to look over at him. In a world filled with technology, electricity is king. Their reality holds no such reverence for it. There's no internet anymore so there's no real use for laptops even if they can be charged. No phone service so no phones. The most they can realistically hope for is throwing together some basic radio walkie-talkies so that they can communicate from a distance. So far they haven't had a need for it but maybe they will in the future.

Fitz just shrugs, sulking. He'd been excited about it and she's killed that enthusiasm. Guilt nips at her stomach. She rolls over to lay on her front, arms crossed underneath her chin so she can properly look at him while he sorts through his treasures. "If we could find a hotplate then I certainly wouldn't say no to conserving our matches and heating up food and water with that instead. That would be wonderful. Wouldn't hurt to have some sort of little lamp either."

His response is little more than noncommittal muttering but the tug at the corner of his mouth and the way his eyes flicker briefly up to meet hers is enough to show that he appreciates what she's said. They both have their insecurities. The fields they've devoted years of their lives to have amounted to little more than words on paper. Knowing that there are tangible ways for him to contribute with his engineering makes him feel on par with Jemma's own medical knowledge.

It's reassuring for him, she knows, but he's always been her equal. There's never been a moment in her mind where she's seen him as less than what he is. He used to have all of the confidence in the world. He'd known indisputably just incredibly brilliant and clever he was. It was when the world change to demand a different sort of cleverness that his confidence began to falter. His former self-assurance peeks out during their times in camp but out in the rest of the world it ducks back inside. Every now and then, she makes a point to explicitly tell him just how she sees him. He's her partner. He's her family and the light in a world filled with far too much darkness. He keeps her going.

Usually he shrugs it off or just listens with that soft smile but he knows exactly what she means when she says these things. He is her best friend in the world. They're family. Through everything, they're family.

"I love you, you know that?" Jemma says quietly. His hands pause with a couple of wires twisted between his fingers. His lips part in a sigh. He nods slowly. The air is a little heavier around them, her throat a little tighter as she watches the rise and fall of his chest and listens to the nearing ragged groans from outside.

"I know." Fitz answers. "Of course I know."

He flashes her a quick smile. She tucks her nose into the crook of her elbow. Her skin smells like dirt and sweat and she's wrinkles her nose at the first inhale. Adjusting herself, Jemma takes another deep breath. Contented, she closes her eyes to focus on the sound of Fitz offhandedly talking (both to her and himself. He doesn't demand responses.) and little clinks of metal again metal. The grunts and hissing groan fade into the background if she focuses on Fitz enough. Fitz and her own heartbeat remind her that she's still alive. They're safe. They're both still alive. These are good things.

Reminding herself of the good things is far easier when she's awake. In her dreams, her time is divided between the wistful 'what was' and the horrific 'what is'. Memories of laughter come as easily as those of standing by and watching intestines spill out onto the ground from ripped body cavities; birthdays with her parents drift into moments of death of her friends, classmates, law enforcement, soldiers; being sprayed by her father with the hose in the garden feels very similar to warm blood splatter into her face as carotid arteries are gnawed open.

Forces always seek one type or equilibrium or another. Their lives are not, as they have learned time and again, exempt from this balancing act. The warehouse has granted them an advantage over their situation. Their world is imbalanced in their favor. In the past she would have declared this bad luck, nothing more. Now, as Fitz shakes her shoulder and her eyes open to see him with an expression that makes it seem that he's about to vomit, she finds herself wondering if the universe has simply decided that it can't allow this to continue.

If there is a god by any definition of the word (she has thought about this for too many pointless hours on the nights she can't quite embrace sleep) then it is a forsaking force. If it exists, it has left them with no hope and a faith that can only grow dimmer with every passing moment. She grasps the edge of a broken window. This, she knows it immediately in her heart, is what Hell must look like. Hell is being surrounded by dozens if not a hundred strong force of shambling corpses. They fill the air with the stench of rot and sounds that demand to be felt right down to the bone.

Hell beckons to the both of them. It promises an end to their tortured, fearful existences. They are always together in life and it will invite them both to join its army in death. They can wait until later when one might die and the other survives; it taunts them with the possibility of one day existing without the other. It needn't be that way. Jemma's breath catches in her throat, ragged, and a soft 'no' falls from her lips. Wrenching herself backwards, she hurries to a window at the far end of the loft. The mouth of hell has come to swallow them whole and there's not a damn thing she can do except collapse to sit on the ground.

"Simmons." His hands grasp her by the shoulders, he ducks his head to catch her eyes. "_Jemma_. We can't stay here. Once they leave… We can't stay here. We have to keep heading north."

Their haven has been compromised. Inevitable, yes, but still disheartening enough for her not to want to get back to her feet. The warehouse has been incredible but staying forever has never been a long-term solution. Since the day that they fled from Pasadena, the plan has always been to continue heading north in the hopes that they might be able to find some sort of island to flee to. It's a shaky plan at best but their circumstances haven't allowed for anything better. If they can only find a place a little more isolated and protected to establish themselves then they can take a breath to think about next steps.

She's never been sure of those next steps.

Fitz pulls her to her feet. Hell keeps calling to them from outside. Jemma fights not to listen.

They have their backpacks sorted out long before the swarm outside pushes on enough to give them a chance to run. Their feet against the pavement outside immediately set off a clock that ticks down against them. There's only going to be so much time before night falls. Waiting has already eaten away far too much of the useable daylight. Fitz mumbles something half-heartedly joking about portable solar panels but her nerves are too on edge to give him more than a second of smiling. Imaginings of setting up a home have been ripped away. Better this way, Jemma thinks. Maybe they've been getting too comfortable staying in one place. It's lowered their guard and only made it devastating enough that she casts a look backwards at the warehouse as they rush away in the opposite direction of the herd of corpses.

Goodbye Tenino.

She and Fitz are almost immediately presented with an important decision to make no more than an hour into their trek: continue on the highway or proceed onto the Yelm-Tenino Trail which a helpful map overview on a sign just before the entrance tells them it parallels. They needn't speak as they shift to follow the bike trail instead of the main road. There's more cover in the woods and more things that can be disturbed to tell them if there's movement nearby. The trail arguably forces them to expend more energy than they would on the flat roadway but the benefits are well worth it. It'll cost them if they don't find proper food soon.

Night falls and finds them restless in the dark. Jemma has her thin blanket wrapped around the both of them but they haven't been able to make themselves risk trying to build a fire. The moments it takes for the eyes to adjust from the light back to the dark are too precious to waste. It's just the two of them. Huddling together to conserve as much heat as they can barely takes the edge off of the air's chill. Still, it's enough to keep them going through the night. Neither of them get any sleep on that first night. Jemma's heart beats too loudly to allow it and Fitz can't stop jumping at every little rustle.

Fitz is making faces by the time they've gone a couple of miles but it's nothing against the brief familiar flicker of disgust when she expectantly offers him a selection of insects to choose from as their meal.

"Fitz." Jemma says patiently. This isn't the first time they've had this conversation. "Grasshoppers are almost as nutritional as a piece of chicken of the same size. They're worth eating, you know that. It's not like we've a massive selection of food as it is now quit being picky."

He concedes (he always does) but still makes faces while he chews anyway. She can't stop the smile that settles on her lips while she watches him. Insects won't be enough to keep them going unless they can round up a large amount of them without putting themselves in danger. So far this hasn't proven to be possible between just the two of them. If they're too focused on keeping an eye out for grasshoppers and crickets then they're opening themselves up to be surprised in the most devastating way. But it's enough for now. That's what matters. It'll keep them on the right path for a little while longer and that's all that they can hope for.

Measuring the amount of progress that they've made is difficult. They've no car (nowhere to drive even if they did because of the clogged roadways) and the only thing to judge from is the progress of the sun across the sky against the increasing ache of their muscles. It's only made worse by the fact that they keep having to stop, hide and wait until it's safe to come out again. A close call comes in the form of a small group of corpses shuffling through the leaves and underbrush. Fitz is barely able to pull her behind a cluster of trees in time to hide them both without attracting attention. Jemma squeezes her eyes closed, presses into his chest and stifles her greedy gasps for breath.

One draws dangerously close to their hiding spot to the point that she feels Fitz fumbling for his knife. It proves unnecessary when they change course and wander off until there's nothing except the usual silence around them. She kisses his cheeks and forehead with a laugh that feels more like a terrified sob as it comes out. Fitz mumbles something about that being too close but Jemma is just overwhelmed by the fact that they're still breathing after coming within arm's length of one of those things.

"We need to find somewhere to hole up for a few days." Fitz mutters a few minutes after they start on their way again. She nods slowly. "We need to get food. Real food, Simmons. We can't just live from bloody grasshopper to grasshopper all of the time. And we need to refill all of our water bottles. We're too low. It's not going to last us much longer and who knows how much farther we have to go. We need a pitstop."

Relief comes in the form of a graffitied, muddied sign proclaiming, 'Welcome to Yelm.' And underneath, 'Pride of the Prairie.' Jemma looks sideways at Fitz to see his mouth forming the words silently with a crease to his brow. He checks around them then jerks his head questioningly in the direction of the sign, gaze flitting back to get her opinion on the matter. Jemma just smiles. When she starts walking, Fitz follows.

The danger of being caught off-guard is renewed and intensified tenfold whenever they're in a new city. Cities mean a higher population density. A higher population density means more corpses will be dragging themselves around on the hunt. There's a greater risk of walking into an abandoned house just to be met by any number of dangerous variables. Being swarmed by waiting dead is the biggest fear that forces her heart to skip a beat whenever they approach a house. They move as inconspicuously as possible from backyard to backyard. Sometimes they walk up to test doors and immediately turn away if they're locked. They don't need to cause a lot of noise by breaking in. They need a house that's unlocked with decent visibility so they can try to get a lay of the land inside before putting themselves at risk by actually entering.

Jemma pauses next to a motorcycle by the back porch of a house. It's not as dusty as she would expect but it seems that the owners probably hadn't been lucky enough to get the chance to use it. She doesn't know how to ride a motorcycle. She shrugs and continues up to the back door on the porch. It seems relatively clear. The house itself seems no worse for wear on the outside. It might even pass as something like peaceful. Well, maybe if she disregards the various pieces of shoved furniture and piles of random belongings that she can see inside through the window. Her heart sinks at the sight of open drawers and doors. Have looters already been here?

"It's worth a look." Fitz says from where he's come to stand by her. He glances backwards towards the bike.

"Go on, see if there's anything you can salvage." Jemma nudges him affectionately with her shoulder He grins sheepishly. She just shakes her head and twists the doorknob. It's unlocked. Pushing inside (she winces at the too loud creak the door makes) she heads over to the first open drawers. Pictures. Her stomach sinks as she looks around carefully. There's no groaning, no footsteps. She swallows and drags her fingertips through the dust covering the photographs to leave a clean line of color in its wake.

This place had once been pristine, she can see that. The table nearby has hosted birthday parties with balloons and colorful cakes and gifts wrapped with ribbons. Jemma looks over towards the kitchen. Another photo shows a woman in what she can only guess is her thirties with children who are far to young to be without parents. The thought that they likely never had to experience that life causes a sickly churning in her stomach. With any hope their demises were quick. Maybe she's a monster for even hoping that they've died already but there's nothing left in this world. Not for children. Ones that young shouldn't have to live from day to day just praying that they won't get ripped open while they're still alive by creatures that only belong in their nightmares.

Jemma turns towards the door, takes a step forward and then the world explodes around her.

When she was little, she had tried her hand at tree climbing just like any other average kid. Sometimes, kids fall. They hurt themselves, cry a bit and get back to climbing. Jemma fell out the tree and had promptly broken her arm in two places. Her parents had rushed her to the hospital where she'd been distracted from her tears by medical posters on the walls. In fact, she'd all but talked her doctor's head off through the sniffles when he began setting her up with a cast. She's always remembered that pain as being excruciating. This, right now, is worse. She imagines that this is what being hit by a truck is like.

"—_Away from her!"_

Fitz? Yeah, that's Fitz screaming at something. Oh god, she's going to die here. He's calling attention to himself when he should be running away from the corpses she knows are just making their way towards her to feast on her flesh. Dazed, agonized, she wants to beg him to kill her before he goes but the most she can manage is to roll over and try to push herself up on her elbows.

"—armed?" She's going mad. That's not Fitz's voice so she must be losing it. "No, no, don't worry about him. He's not going to—Ward, take his gun already!"

"No, we're not armed! What the bloody hell was he _thinking_! He shot her! He just—" Fitz's voice is higher in his outrage. He's not that close to her though. She would recognize his touch but those hands, small and soft and unfamiliar, are definitely not his.

"Can you talk?" The voice asks softly while Fitz continues arguing loudly with someone in the background. Has he always been this loud? Her tongue sits in her mouth thickly. She has to take a moment.

Finally, all Jemma can manage is a mumbled word of, "Fitz?"

"You have to help her. You people did this, you… you have to—" He chokes on the fierce words. Ah, those are his fingers. He's brushing her hair from her forehead gingerly.

"Fitz, is it? Fitz we can help—Shut up, Miles! This is exactly why I didn't want you coming out on this supply run with us. You're a dipshit and a terrible shot. Now stand there like a good boy and keep quiet. Fitz? Just come with us. We have people, okay? Medical supplies. We can give you and your friend a safe place to stay until she's alright. I promise, we're not going to hurt you." Fitz makes a sound in his throat. Jemma can picture his glower but her eyes refuse to open much more than a squint against the throbbing reverberating in her skull. "Look, you don't have a ton of options and we all need to get going. Einstein alerted every Walker in earshot with his idiocy. So not cool."

"Yeah. Yeah, alright." He doesn't sound pleased but whomever she is she's right. Jemma lets her eyelids droop again as she's lifted off of the ground by someone with far more defined muscles than Fitz. Their words are comforting in that she's not alone. She's fading and she knows it. The painful ache only intensifies when she tries to turn her head so she stops.

"Relax, okay?" The voice is closer to her. She's not sure when she's been put down or when her head was moved to be cradled in someone's lap. "We'll take care of you."

Jemma wants to say a word of thanks. Instead, her brain gives in to unconsciousness.

Maybe she'll manage something later.


	2. Chapter 2

Gran always had words of advice when Jemma came to see her. Bullying is a behavior that expands beyond international borders. It's one with which she was intimately acquainted as a child. Time out playing in the schoolyard came with as many laughs as ripped holes at the knees of her stockings and scraped palms from falling against the pavement. It's not that her classmates had a problem with her being smarter than they were (okay, so some of them did) but it was more their bad reactions to being corrected so often. Embarrassment at being publicly wrong and called out on it never brought a good reaction. While the teacher would chide her, her classmates would flush and glare and, damn, she always knew what would happen once they were out of the teacher's sight.

The other children would lash out with both fists and words that left deeper scars than any scab could. The tears that welled in her eyes would have nothing to do with the bruises and everything to do with their taunts. There was a reason no one liked her, they'd sneer, and it was all because she was some know-it-all freak. She was ugly, annoying, weird. The words crept in through her superficial cuts to nestle just beneath her skin. Every so often, they would claw their way back to the surface during her years going through college with the highest marks.

At least as a teenager she'd had friends. Not many despite her constant smile even in the face of cruel laughter but some were better than none. With age changed the insults. Obnoxious took the place of annoying; virgin stepped into the place of freak (after the first time she kissed a boy, he told all of his friends that much more had happened and virgin was tossed aside for slut); chav was added onto the end of ugly. Nothing was particularly creative. All of their barbs were just as common as the ones before. They still built in her body like a disease that, no matter her accomplishments and the love of her people, never quite went away.

Jemma has always been confident in herself. She knows very well that she's cleverer than the average person. She knows that she scores highly because of hard work and natural intelligence. She knows that problems that would stare down others are quickly moved by her own mind when she works through them. It's not that she has a deluded self-image. When she's looked in the mirror, she's paused long enough to consider that she's passably attractive. It's just that the bite of bullying never quite dies away. She can have every confidence in the world and still feel the sting of those words threatening to burst out of her skin.

But Gran always had words for her. In her tears, Gran would wipe her cheeks dry and stoke back her hair. There would always be a cup of tea, biscuits, a kiss to the forehead. She would lead Jemma by the hand to sit her down at the table, her feet dangling a few inches off of the ground right up until the time her growth spurt kicked in. Her thumbs would brush gently across her knuckles as she looked Jemma right in the eyes as she would say, "You can fight back, my darling. If someone is threatening you in anyway, you can fight back. Don't begin a fight but certainly know how to end one."

Jemma has never been that sort of fighter. She's not one to throw punches if it can be avoided. Instead, she's always allowed her mind to do the fighting for her. Where physical retaliation would cause nothing but trouble (as it so generally does) she did finally speak up for herself. The tactic of understanding her assailants' and their weaknesses only to turn the tables by offering help that they desperately needed proved surprisingly effective. Given a public enough setting and the subtle threat of exposing those academic weak points in front of all of their friends intimidated most enough that they had no choice but to accept. From that point, Jemma was simply so polite and friendly that people overall formed bonds to her. Reluctant or not, their motivations to tear her down were cowed by the unspoken threat of withdrawing her help (which they desperately needed and she knew it) and a sense of obligation.

For the ones that wouldn't accept the offer, her newfound connections generally forced them to back off through social pressures. There had been the problem. Despite lasting damages, Jemma had addressed the issue is a different way than had been expected of her. Learn, understand, adapt. Humans are not magically immune to behavioral studies. It had been known before but until needing to exploit the knowledge for herself it had been held as interesting but easily dismissed in her mind.

"No, I told you. I told you that taking him out on the run with us was a stupid idea. He's so gung-ho even with just a knife. Giving him a gun was just plain dumb. Didn't you see just how much he puffed himself up and bragged about going with us before we headed out?" There's that voice again. It's insistent and agitated.

"We had to give him a chance to go to see if he could prove himself. We'll never have too many field ready people, okay? We had to. Look, he's already relegated to grunt work again. I'm taking care of it." A male voice. Not Fitz. That she doesn't hear Fitz at all makes her feel sick. Adds to her feeling of sickness, rather, considering the pounding in her skull. She vaguely remembers hearing Fitz screaming that she'd been shot but that can't be right. She's not a person who just gets shot. That doesn't happen to her. It's only after bumbling through these thoughts for another few seconds that she has to stop and realize how stupid she sounds.

Swallowing, she tries not to give away that she's conscious. A shuffle next to her lets her know that someone's come closer. The hairs on her arms rise. Resisting the urge to flinch away takes all of her self-control. Where the hell is she? It's not the warehouse but, no, it wouldn't be. Of course it wouldn't be. Foolish to have that cross her mind.

Nails press lightly against the skin of her temple to peel something adhesive away. The throbbing tempo increases in her skull, frantic and fueled by her confusion. The woman (she's fairly certain it's the woman) hisses softly through her teeth. Jemma ignores the sound of rummaging to try to keep her breath steady so she doesn't seem suspicious. Where's Fitz? What have they done with him? She hears, distantly, other voices. There's a very faint round of popping sounds that she can't quite place but it sparks her nerves to life even more intensely. Something wet dabs against her temple. The sudden dull pain from the contact finally jerks her into action.

Jemma has never listened to her Gran before but sometimes there have to be exceptions. Her eyes snap open and her fist flies clumsily forward to collide with a even more painful crack against the woman's cheek. Knuckles aching, Jemma scrambles to her feet so that she can put as much distance between herself and this stranger as possible. They don't live in a world where people just take care of each other for no reason. And Fitz is gone and she doesn't know this woman who's slowly extending her hand out and speaking to her in a soothing voice that only makes her even more anxious. The big brown eyes staring at her flicker to the side. Jemma follows her gaze and sees just what is making her so cautious.

A handgun is sitting right next to her.

"Shit." The word falls like a firecracker and Jemma snaps into action to seize the gun as if she's just been waiting for her cue.

"Fitz?" Jemma spits out. "Is he…?"

"No, Skye—Oh." Raising both hands slowly, this 'Skye' nods in the direction behind Jemma. "No, Fitz is going to come back soon. I promise, he's totally fine. Seriously, I promise."

It's hard to breathe properly. Readjusting her sweaty grip, Jemma swallows and looks over her shoulder just long enough to see that there's a door there.

"What's your name? Fitz wouldn't tell us." Skye's paler than she was before. Even so, her voice is level and calm. They might have all the time in the world from how she's looking at Jemma (she doesn't think she would be able to be that calm if the roles had been switched).

"I want to see him."

"I swear, Trip is just showing him around but he said he'd be right back. He was driving himself crazy just sitting here. I just suggested Trip try to get his mind off of things. Take him to go get food to bring back here." Skye can't fully hide the brief tremble of fear in her voice. Skye is scared. The full realization hits her hard. Someone is scared of her. A living, breathing human being is frightened. Because of her. Does she think that Jemma will pull the trigger at any second? Would she, Jemma, pull back her finger that little bit that's required to kill someone?

Yes, she tells herself firmly, she would end this life if it meant protecting Fitz. Her finger would pull back, a bullet would explode out and Skye would be dead on the ground with her brain splattered against the wall. She thinks that she can do just about anything if it means that Fitz will be okay. Drawing in a rushed breath, Jemma squares her shoulder and concentrates fully on Skye.

"If Fitz is really okay… If he's coming back—he wouldn't just leave me so if he's really coming back then we can wait." At least she sounds like she has more conviction than she actually feels. One of her hands is cramping and despite being willing to kill (she will if she needs to. She will, she will, she will.) she doesn't want to accidentally set the bloody thing off for no reason. She removes it from the gun; shakes it uncomfortably down at her side as though that'll stop the prickling. Skye murmurs something too low for Jemma to understand but she clearly is alright with the proposal. Not that she has much of a choice.

Jemma is not a physically imposing person. She knows this as a fact. Even at this distance she can estimate that Skye has about couple of inches on her in height. It's not much but enough that she's clearly taller. What she can see of her arms and legs have clear muscle definition. Skye's going to be stronger as well and if what she's said about the food is true then she's also been consistently fed. She'll have more energy than either herself or Fitz. While they've been subsisting on mediocre meals of insects and sporadic foraged plants, Skye and her group have presumably had real, nourishing food.

The gun feels like a block of lead, heavy against her palms with the threat of how much it can devastate. While Jemma can spare moments to glance around the room (she was on an actual bed, she realizes now), Skye is fixated on watching her every move. Her breaths look more shallow and rapid. Jemma's first instinct is the horrible urge to reassure. There are a great many things to be fearful of in their world. She's not supposed to be one of them but here they are.

She is Jemma Simmons.

She is clever, talented, confident. She doesn't like violence.

(Looking at Skye's cheek, Jemma can already see it bruising from where her fist made impact. She won't be surprised if her knuckles are already mottled from her shoddy punching form.)

She strives to be warm and kind. She's always considered herself to be a good person; a gentle person. She thinks again of the bullet in this gun. One move of her finger will rip away more than just a woman's life. This bullet is tethered to her humanity. Fitz once spoke up one night to ramble on about his thoughts about just what humanity meant. Just because their species was devastated didn't mean that they had to lose the things that made them human. People are not born evil despite the things that they have watched looters do to each other and their victims. They have a choice to hold onto their souls if they indeed have such a thing.

(The bullet will surely shred hers if she allows it to crack open Skye's skull; it'll disintegrate amongst the shards of bone and globs of brain matter.)

She is compassionate.

(Next to the bed is shallow bowl of water, an old bandage, a tube of antiseptic, a glass of water, several pills, new bandages, a rag reddened by her own blood. Skye had been ready to clean her wound and change the bandage.)

Offhandedly, Jemma reaches up to touch her temple. The sweat on her skin stings the wound. She jerks her hand away.

"I was shot." It sounds even more ludicrous when she says it out loud. Studying every line of Skye's face, she waits to be corrected and to be told that, no, she hasn't been shot. What a silly idea to think that she's been shot and is still standing. It's not phrased as a question but Skye seems to understand all the same. Throat bobbing from a hard swallow, Skye does the opposite of what she wants and just nods in confirmation.

"One—" Jemma's finger shifts along the body of the handgun. Skye flinches, her eyelids drop slightly, her muscles tighten. It's all during one intake of breath; good lord, it's just a couple of heartbeats. Every thump in her chest is more startling than the last because. Someone flinching away from her out of fear for their life isn't something that she wants to get used to. Another beat passes. Time resumes its normal pace and she lets out a breath she wasn't even aware she was holding in. Skye clears her throat, opens her eyes and makes a valiant effort to return to what she was saying. "One bullet grazed your head. Your, uh, temple. One of our guys heard you come into the house and when he saw you he panicked. He just… He's a terrible shot though. Never thought I'd be thankful for that. He won't be getting a gun back again anytime soon though. I can definitely promise that."

The tightness of her throat strangles down her voice.

(She will pull the trigger if she needs to.)

"Is she…What are you doing?" As Fitz's confused voice pitches a little higher, Jemma can't swallow back her ragged sob of relief. It's such a ugly sound of desperation but she doesn't care. Nothing else matters. Hurriedly, she peels her fingers from the handgun to free itself. Her chest fills more easily with air with its departure. Her muscles don't feel so leaden anymore. Thank God, she thinks, because stiffness would only make throwing her arms around Fitz's neck harder.

He doesn't say a word when he pulls her closer into his arms nor does he protest when her chapped lips showers sloppy kisses all over his cheeks and forehead. She can feel his lips moving against her earlobe in his attempts to soothe her. The solace of having Fitz here bleeds away to be drowned in her gasps for proper breaths. When did the world begin spinning around her? That's certainly not in order. Perspiration beads on her neck. Something's gone terribly wrong. Unless she's made a huge oversight in her studies back at Caltech, a graze from a bullet isn't supposed to make her heart want to jump out of her chest or rip the air from right inside her lungs.

Fitz is crouched down in front of her on the floor. Her hands are clutched around his wrists where he cradles her face. Jemma can hear his voice but not his words over the roaring staccato heartbeat against her eardrums. This must be what dying feels like. Of all the things that she might have died from, she's going to die because some idiot with a gun had gotten trigger-happy. It feels so damn American that she can almost feel a wild laugh wanting to bubble up from her throat.

Minutes tick on (Hours? It feels like hours.) until she can finally hear what he's trying to tell her. Breathe. He's just repeating the same thing over and over.

"Slow breaths, Jemma. Deep, slow breaths. Just like me, see?" He breathes in. She fights to do the same. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Progress is made. Her brain no longer feels like it's buzzing at the lack of oxygen. Her chest rises and falls just like Fitz's does. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Repeat as needed.

Fitz isn't the only one sitting with her on the floor. Shifting her focus, she looks right into Skye's eyes. They're so bright this close. Bright and worried. Not a drop of fear to be seen in that gaze no matter how much she searches. Just pure concern. Her palms are flat against the floor. One of her little fingers barely makes contact with her leg. Jemma wonders what Skye was like before the world crumbled if this is the sort of attention she bestows upon complete strangers. Maybe it's because of a sense of obligation.

"Feeling better?" Skye offers a smile.

"Yeah…" Her answer is breathy. It's stupid.

"Can I put a new bandage on your head?" Skye isn't making any movement. She's waiting, Jemma realizes bizarrely. She's genuinely waiting for permission to put any hand on her.

"I can do it." Jemma mumbles, sitting back to lean against the side of the bed heavily. At the raised eyebrow she's receiving, she elaborates with a simple, "I do have a couple of P-H-Ds. I think I can manage putting a bandage on myself."

"You're a doctor?"

Whatever response she's expecting, hopeful excitement isn't one of them. It's painted all over Skye's face. Her eyes are somehow brighter, she's smiling in disbelief and fidgeting enough that Jemma's thoughts imagine a child before Christmas.

"She's biochem, technically but doesn't matter. She's brilliant." Fitz trails off with a shrug. There's a beat and he adds, awkwardly, "I'm engineering."

The Christmas excitement, that's gone now. Now she's so enthusiastic and relieved that it might as well have been Christmas, New Year's and her birthday all in one fell swoop. Skye can't contain the wide smile and eager way she looks between the two of them. Jemma squeezes ointment from the half-empty tube onto her finger. Applying it sends a cracking throb through her skull.

"Thank _God_." Jemma raises an eyebrow in surprise which prompts Skye to elaborate hastily, "We don't have a lot of doctors. Most of them—We don't have a lot of people who knows how to deal with medical situations. There are a few but… God knows we can always use more. And more engineers, obviously, but our last, like, doctor was… She's gone now. We could definitely use more people. We can always use more people, clearly, but particularly with skills like yours… We could use the help. Not that, like, we wouldn't force you to stay here if you don't want to. This isn't a prison or anything, I just… I'll just stop talking now."

Skye cleared her throat, rubbed her flat palms against her thighs, and rose to her feet. Clapping her hands together idly, she glanced from Fitz to Jemma and back again. "Look, why don't you get some rest. I'll come back later. You and Fitz are welcome to stay for as long as you want but, umm, if you want to go at least wait until you recover from that concussion, alright? And whenever you want to leave… If you want to leave, we'll send you off with some supplies. So… yeah. Yeah. I'll check back in later."

The door thuds closed in her wake before either of them can respond. Immediately, Fitz is rising off of the floor to help her onto the bed. She doesn't _need_ the help but she accepts it regardless with nothing more than a brief smile. There's really very few things not to smile about in this moment. Instead of being left for dead, she and Fitz have been brought into some assumedly safe location with lots of other people around.

Thinking of other people around (living, breathing, maybe even thriving people) makes her heart lurch. Be it from panic or excitement or anxiety, she's honestly not sure. She probably should chalk it up to some mix of all of it. For months, it's only been the two of them. Their voices have filled the oppressive silences, their hands have brushed away tears when the world felt too pointless, their bodies have huddled close to keep each other warm during the coldest nights. Just the two of them watching each other and keeping the other motivated to just go on. One minute, one hour, one day at a time, they'd give each other reasons for why staying alive was important through the smallest words or touches.

Now they're not alone anymore. He doesn't say anything but she knows just by looking at him that the same thought is firmly at the center of his mind. Are they staying? She scrunches her nose in protest as he fussily guides her to properly lie back against the pillow. If she's uncomfortable with it, he won't make her stay. If he's uncomfortable with it, she won't make him stay. They need to agree on a plan of action and they need to agree on it. The prospect of going from a pair to who knows how many is daunting. Still, as she reaches out for his hand, it's definitely not as daunting as willingly walking back into the life they'd been in until this point.

"You walked around?" Jemma asks. The thoughtfulness leaves his face and he immediately gets up to retrieve bowl she'd failed to notice before sitting on the counter by the door. With a broad grin, he holds it in front of her. It's actually still giving off wisps of steam that she watches rise into the air. It's so unbelievable that all she can do is stare at it for the first few seconds right before bursting into giddy laughter. His face lights up even more when he pulls a spoon out of his shirt's worn pocket. It's not even necessary. She would've happily just held the bowl and drank it.

"It's amazing. They have so much room and people with weapons and they have a fresh water sources nearby. Fences, Jemma, there are these fences with razor wire around. Sure some of the places were breached, obviously, but they've made this place… It's safe. It seems safe. There are so many people around." He's fumbling over his words in his exuberance to everything that he wants to say out before he forgets. "Goats! The guy who was showing me around, Trip, he told me there were goats. And _chickens_."

Chickens. Goats. Clean water. Each word makes her heart jump a little harder. Adjusting herself so that she can clutch the precious bowl of soup to her chest and spoon it into her mouth makes the whole situation even more surreal. Each bite allows her to taste things that she hasn't for a very long time. It's just a bunch of vegetables but they don't have the kick of harsh sodium or odd thickness that comes with tinned soups. Fitz eagerly continues his explanation of the garden he'd seen flourishing with tomatoes, all sorts of leafy greens, carrots, various squashes, potatoes, and other things he'd only gotten a glimpse of in passing.

He talks and talks for the entirety of the time that she drags on eating this soup. She's talking her time with each spoonful in spite of the ache in her grumbling stomach or the insistence from her brain to gulp it all down as quickly as possible. Every bit of vegetable is savored on her tongue and every drop of broth warms her with each swallow. Scraping the bottom of the bowl is distressing. She can't stop herself from making a soft disappointed sound in the back of her throat as she pulls the bowl to her lips to drink down the last vestiges.

"Verdict?" She doesn't need to elaborate on the question. He only takes a moment to consider her before he gives his answer.

"I vote for staying."

Jemma nods slowly, setting her bowl aside reluctantly. He offers his hand once more. She takes it and squeezes with a smile. She would bet good money (not that money has any value apart from tinder) that he knows already what her answer will be. "Yeah… Yeah, me too."

The decision's made.

It's a few hours before Skye pokes her head in again. Fitz is sprawled out on the bed next to her with an arm wrapped around her. Jemma lifts herself up on her elbows from her position curled into his side. Realization flickers over Skye's face and her olive cheeks redden. An apology for intruding is halfway fumbled over. She moves to shut the door but Jemma waves a hand. Right. Skye's gotten the wrong impression about what this looks like.

"Seriously, I'm sor—"

"Skye. I promise, it's okay. You haven't interrupted anything, don't be ridiculous." Jemma waves it off.

"You just look so, you know, comfortable." Skye gestures towards Fitz. He grunts in his sleep.

"He's my best friend in the world." Jemma presses a kiss to his cheek and brushes his dirty curls back affectionately. "We're like family but we're not what your expression is telling me you think we are. We've never been like that."

"Oh." Skye sheepishly nods. She scuffs the heel of her shoe across the floor briefly, looking down at her feet. "So, uh, have you given any thought to if you're staying or going?"

"We're staying." When Skye smiles, Jemma smiles back.

Skye and Fitz both make her stay in bed for another full day. At least during the day, Skye brings her a couple of books (_Harry Potter_, the fifth book; _Gulliver's Travels_; _Crime and Punishment_) and apologizes because she doesn't know what Jemma likes. It's just a day. It doesn't pass in minutes but in faces, meals, laughs. There are so many laughs be it from excitement or nervousness that her throat protests from being used more all at once than it has in months. That's what it feels like.

Over the course of the day, she's told about the Dr. Ross who'd tried to go through the boundaries to save her father after he'd been bitten only to fall to the same fate. A tired-looking Dr. Banner makes a stop by her room to apologize for his absence the previous day. He's scrounged up a stethoscope from somewhere and checks her pulse carefully, examines her eyes, and comes to the same conclusion as Skye that she's luckily able to walk away from this with only a concussion. Skye drags in a man with shaggy brown hair and a scruffy beard to match. This turns out to be Miles and Skye forces him to apologize. He does so with a note of petulance. Fitz does nothing but glower at him the whole time. A man with dark hair, a grin and a loose sort of swaggering way of carrying himself comes in particularly to talk to Fitz. They're both engineers. Fitz is beyond delighted.

It's when she's touring the compound properly with Skye the next day that Jemma learns more about the place by experiencing it for herself rather than conjuring up images in her head from Fitz's descriptions. The most striking thing that hits her the hardest is seeing just how many people are walking around. It's one thing to have heard about it from Fitz but there are just so many people. Young, old, middle-aged, even children. A dark-skinned young boy happily introduces himself as Ace and invites her to play ball the moment that he sees her with Skye.

Jemma quickly gets the impression that Skye is popular with the kids. This assumption is only solidified when Ace asks if Skye will be having story time later. Through the laughing, smiling, and even tossing the ball back and forth for a little while, she finds herself studying Skye as she would any interesting scientific specimen. For all of the unavoidable bloodshed she has to have seen, her heart is still more welcoming than she expects. In fact, it's in contrast to most other people she comes into contact with. They eye her when she passes. Clearly it's been pretty widespread that she and Fitz are new additions to their population. Some offer smiles, some don't, but almost all of them have that slight note of suspicion beneath their acknowledgements.

This behavior makes more sense to her than Skye's.

"I think AC is busy right now with Colonel Fury but they'll be pleased to meet you, seriously. We'll just get to that later." Skye says to her as they walk by the garden. When Jemma pauses to linger, so does Skye. She kneels down to stroke her fingers over the broad prickly leaves of what she realizes is a butternut squash plant with several growing gourds peeking out from underneath. Her father would have been delighted to see such a flourishing garden. He'd filled her childhood with flowers and vegetables growing in the backyard. Watching plants bloom from seedling into flowers into edible vegetables had been entrancing to her.

"AC?" Jemma asks idly.

"Oh, most people just call him Coulson but, I don't know, I guess I like seeing his disapproval when I say AC. AC like 'Admiral Coulson' since he's like one of the leaders of our little thing that we have here. And he didn't have a military title like the others. Him, Colonel Fury, Commander May, Commander Hand and Commander Hill. They're the big shots." Jemma nods along with Skye's explanation. These people have a system of organization. That's good. It's not all chaos. It's hierarchical. There are people in charge. More importantly, there's a small _group_ of people in charge so the decisions aren't all left to one person.

Skye's more than happy to keep chattering on. Jemma gets the distinct feeling that she's trying to reassure her that she's made the right decision in staying. While Skye talks her through the various places and people that they pass by, Jemma studies everything from Skye to the buildings to the other people.

Their fences are more impressive than she originally assumed they would be. There seem to have been quite a number of unused military and civilian vehicles around. Instead of allowing them to go to waste, they've been pushed right up against the fences in a fairly equal intervals so that they offer weighted support when the Walkers (Skye's word for these things is far more acceptable than anything else she's heard) group up against the outside. Several warehouses she assumes had been build for other purposes are now used to house various supplies and double for providing shelter for the small livestock. Their goat herd is small but judging from the bouncing goat kids they'll add to the numbers soon enough. Their chickens also have fuzzy chicks squeaking and hurriedly chasing after their mothers.

A serious looking man armed with sharply defined cheekbone, a set jaw and a large automatic weapon unexpectedly pats his hand on Skye's shoulder in greeting as they pass by each other. His companion is Trip. She's met him before but the other one she doesn't know. He's Grant Ward according to Skye. Special Forces with Trip back when such a thing was more relevant. Very into playing board games but that's just between the two of them. Can't have it getting out to just anyone to, "ruin his hard-ass reputation."

There are quite a few of these patrolling groups at all times. There's never anyone by themselves. The smallest teams are like Ward and Trip in pairs. There's another comprised of two men and a woman. Skye helpfully points them each out in turn. Captain Steve Rogers and Sergeant Bucky Barnes formerly of the United States Marines; Agent Peggy Carter, formerly part of MI6 before being assigned to part of a international task force coming to escort and protect British scientists during collaborations with American scientists. She's the only survivor of that team.

"So tonight we're going to move you from the medical area to the barracks with everyone else. Same building, just up on a different floor. You and Fitz can take rooms," Skye glances sideways at her, adding, "Or just one room for the two of you, on any floor that has space."

"I'm sorry. We certainly weren't meaning to take up your medical space." Jemma flushes, twisting her mouth in displeasure.

"No, you weren't! We just put you there because we keep that room for, uh, cases that require isolation." Skye sounds a little sheepish upon admitting this. "We didn't know if you would be a threat or not so… We just wanted to keep our people safe."

Jemma swallows uncomfortably. The memory of the gun's weight rises from the back of her mind. She wipes her palms across her shirt to rid herself of it. Clearly this had been a smart decision considering the first action she had taken upon waking up. Instead of speaking, she nods in understanding. Skye say anything else on the subject.

An armed man and a woman walk past them but don't do much beyond simple greetings and smiles. Unlike the others, Skye doesn't have much to tell her about them. It turns out that she doesn't really know much about them apart from their names and that they're very close. Neither Natasha nor Clint offer much background on themselves. They're friendly enough sometimes, Skye gives her that assurance, but they don't talk about themselves or what they did before the outbreak. She does know that Clint is a dead shot with a bow and arrow while Natasha seems to be able to handle just about any conventional weapon. And Natasha speaks Russian. There's that too.

"Where's Fitz?" Skye asks curiously.

"Mr. Stark decided to commandeer his attentions for a little while. Apparently there's quite a list of engineering issues that she could use a hand with but since Fitz wouldn't leave me until I was permitted out of the room, he had to wait until now for help." Jemma shrugs.

"You can just call him Tony. Just ignore how he introduces himself, okay? He can be a bit of a dick." Skye reaches out to momentarily touch her wrist. "Just don't let him talk down to you."

"So, if I may ask." Jemma twists her hands together uncomfortably. This feels like an odd question to ask. "When do I start, umm, start working?"

"Whenever anyone gets sick or injured, pretty much? Apart from helping out with the general work that needs to be done, your medical work obviously takes priority whenever it comes up. We have, like, a hundred and fifty people so there's enough that you don't have to be concerned about needing to tend to someone over whatever grunt work needs to be done. And anyways, Miles is going to owe you for a damn long time for being an idiot." Skye talks about their way of life so casually meanwhile Jemma's still trying to decide if these remnants of human civilization are part of some wild comatose dream or not.

"What about you?" Jemma asks the moment that it crosses her mind, curiously, that she doesn't actually know a thing about Skye beyond her name or what she's observed.

"Me?" Skye's sounds a little airy. "What about me?"

"I mean, what do you do?" Jemma persists.

"Oh. I don't do anything special. Sometimes they send me out on supply runs or put me on perimeter guard because I'm not bad with a gun. Definitely not as bad as Miles." Skye trails off to make a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat. "But nothing special. Not like you or Dr. Banner or Tony or Fitz. I just do what I can."

Jemma wants to ask more questions. How did Skye end up here with all of these military personnel? What was she doing before the outbreak? Had she ever been out there on her own? Had she lost anyone? Every question threatens to tread over into invasive territory but the more that she realizes she doesn't know about Skye in comparison to what she's been told about everyone else, the more she wants to know. Skye doesn't give her the chance to pursue her thoughts because she twists around in front of the building they started from and ends the tour.

"I think you'll settle in here just fine and…" Skye clears her throat. Her tone's a little more gentle. "And you can relax a little bit. Don't get too lax, obviously, but you can lower that guard a little bit. You've been tense this entire time."

She doesn't bother to try to deny it. She knows that she has. What she hadn't known was that Skye was paying that close attention to her. For all of her observing, she'd failed to consider that maybe Skye was keeping a close eye on her as well. It occurs to her that she hasn't apologized out loud for the incident for the gun. Then again, she's not sorry about it. She can't be. Fitz comes first. She'd been acting under the suspicion that Fitz might be dead or in danger; that these people couldn't be fully trusted. This isn't something she's willing to apologize for.

"Consider this your official welcome to Shield." Skye extends her arms wide with a cheesy grin.

Jemma stares at her. "I thought… This is Fort Lewis. Fitz said—"

"Okay, yeah, technically this is Fort Lewis." Skye lowers her arms and scratches the back of her neck. "You missed it because, you know, unconscious at the time but there's this beat up sign that people hung up out on the road leading here that says: 'Come To Fort Lewis. We Are Your Shield. Together, We Survive.' But everything gets beat up in some way eventually. During some patrol, apparently someone took a shot to put down a Walker in front of the sign. Just like that, the 'Your' is totally illegible. So…"

"So now it says: 'We Are Shield." Jemma finishes.

"We Are Shield." Skye slowly grins. "And it's a much cooler name."


	3. Chapter 3

Falling into the rhythm of coexistence in a small society comes more quickly than Jemma expects it to. While she and Fitz end up moving into a shared room (they agree to it without any verbal discussion), it turns out that there's far more to be done than Skye had originally said. Rather, now that they're actively earning their places within the group it seems far more busy. Where they'd before kept to more or less to themselves in the medical quarantine room they now fully immerse themselves in the world that has been opened to them. The sheer amount of available space that they near have is incredible.

The space actively being used for day-to-day life is only a fraction of what the entirety of Fort Lewis could offer them. But as Fitz had said after taking a walk around the inside of the perimeter with her, it can be more easily protected if they only use the space that they immediately need. Building walls and tending to their maintenance is far easier when the perimeter is only what it absolutely needs to be. Having too large of a border without the manpower or resources to keep up the defenses is just begging for a breach. And all it takes is the just one for it to be game over for everyone.

Game over. Jemma grimaces at the words and chides herself for using them. Skye uses the phrasing fairly often. Clearly it's rubbing off on her. She's not sure how she feels about that. The regularity with which Skye pops into the medical wing to check on her has been more disconcerting than readapting to people overall. At first, she wonders if Skye has an ulterior motive for randomly showing up to hang out while Jemma's busy tending to wounds with Dr. Banner.

("You can call me Bruce." He says to her time and time again. She doesn't.)

Skye will settle herself down on a vacant bed, idly swing her legs back and forth while she watches Jemma work, and immediately extend the silent offer of spending time together when there's a lull in her workload. These come often enough. Even after Jemma turns her down the first couple of times, Skye persists. It turns out that this sort of attention isn't unusual for her.

For the most part, the injuries are nothing to be concerned about. Tending to open cuts quickly reduces the risk of infection and very few require more than a quick cleaning. A handful of the patrol guards sometimes demand more serious attention. Miles even makes an appearance with a wide split trailing across his shoulder after a mishap in engineering. They don't share many words as Jemma threads a needle through his flesh with green thread. All the while, Skye crossly interrogates him even with worry painted all over her face.

For her criticisms, they're clearly a close pair. She'll brush back his hair, touch his arm, ask all sorts of questions, insult him in a way that Jemma can only describe as frustratedly affectionate. He tries to make himself bigger, sits up a little straighter, than she would expect from someone in the middle of getting crude stitches. She's doing her best but she isn't a medical doctor, she's a scientist. His tough facade wavers when he cringes away from her hands, glaring and swearing under his breath. Skye's not impressed by the behavior.

"Don't be an ass. Jemma's helping you. It's not her fault that you went and got yourself hurt trying to screw around with the engineers." Skye flashes an apologetic smile Jemma's way. "He thought some dumbs prank on Tony would be a good idea. No idea why he thought that considering that Maria would have his head if she knew about it and give him a punch to the head if he'd actually succeeded. Never mind if his stupid joke had gotten someone hurt."

Jemma's even less fond of him than she was before. Miles is too busy sheepishly grinning at Skye to notice anything about her. He watches her like there's no one else in the room. She expects it for herself considering that he's not acted friendly since that first day. Between the sideways glares that he seems to hope she won't notice or the blatant ignoring of her presence unless absolutely necessary, he's just being particularly pointed in his disregard for her today. And this foolhardy boy thinks that it's okay to go around trying to play pranks on people? Does he really understand their world or is it all just an adventure to him? With this sort of attitude she finds herself wondering just how he managed to survive this long. Her irritable lapse in focus causes her to press a little too hard with her needle.

"Fucki—"

"Hey, you got yourself into this mess." Skye cuts him off before he can finish.

"I'm sorry." Jemma says, frowning. She means it. For all of the things that she is, has thought, has the questionable potential to become, she doesn't like hurting anyone. Even when she doesn't like them she doesn't want to do anything to hurt them if it's avoidable. Pulling the thread tight, she snips it off close to his skin. His embroidered shoulder just needs a last swab of cleansing alcohol and dab of ointment covered by a bandage. "You're done now though. No more sitting around. Try not to pull your stitches though. I'll—Dr. Banner can check on you in a few hours to make sure that everything's looking okay."

"Yeah." Miles seems to think that this is enough of a thanks as he tugs his ratty blue t-shirt back on over his head. His attentions are firmly fixed on Skye. Running his fingers through his shaggy hair, he clearly wants to talk to Skye. He's not at all subtle, Jemma thinks as she drifts away from them to take inventory of their supplies. It's force of habit to keep doing this over and over. Apart from liking to stay on top of situations, she also feels compelled by the ritual of taking inventory. It'd been done often back when it was just her and Fitz. She sees no reason to change.

"Jemma?" Jemma pauses at the sound of her name, head down, in the middle of recording the number of butterfly stitches remain with her pen poised over the notebook cradled in her arms. There's an uncomfortable pause. She looks up when nothing follows. Apparently eye contact is what Skye's been waiting for because she brightens immediately. "If you're done for right now, I'm about to go read to the kids. If you want to come. I know it sounds dorky or whatever but a lot of the adults seem to enjoy it too."

Jemma can see Miles glowering over Skye's shoulder.

"In a bit." She smiles. Miles looks relieved. Really, shouldn't she be the one acting ornery about him? "I really do need to update what supplies we have and what we're running low on."

"Yeah. Yeah, right, of course. Just, uh, come by if you get the chance." Skye's smile never falters with the offer. Jemma wonders how she does that. She hears their renewed conversation fade with their departing footsteps. Maybe her willingness to let them be alone will lessen Miles's ire towards her. As unwarranted and annoying as it is, she still knows that she has to be able to get along with the other people in the camp. They're all dependent on each other after all.

"You should go." Dr. Banner says from where he's straightening up supplies in the cabinet next to her. "I can handle everything here."

Well, now he's not left her with a lot of options.

"Skye's a friendly one." Her small smile tightens under his scrutiny. He's looking at her like he understands what's going through her mind. She's seen him studying her whenever Skye pops around for a visit. They never talk about it but she knows that something's on his mind. It seems that now he's taking it upon himself to explain just what those thoughts are. "She likes to make sure that the newest additions to our group feel welcomed and cared for. And since there haven't been a lot of new people for a couple of months… She likes to get to know everyone."

"Social butterfly, I suppose." Jemma nods slowly but Dr. Banner shakes his head.

"Not really. Social, sure, but she's not doing it to be social." He pauses, shrugs noncommittally, and resumes cataloguing the box of medication in front of him. She waits for some explanation. It doesn't come.

With the decision seemingly having made for her, she neatly replaces everything that's been moved during her treatment of Miles and only says a brief goodbye to which Dr. Banner responds with a smile that tries and fails to reach his eyes. He always looks so tired. Jemma wonders if her eyes are lined by the same fatigue. Dr. Banner, for all of his patience and kindness, has the hollow eyes of a man who once had a great spark. She thinks that maybe his eyes once glimmered like Fitz's do when he's working on something interesting. Maybe they were filled with the sort of excitement that she'd once felt uncontainable when studying microbes and discovering new traits about them in the laboratory.

During an experiment that had carried on for longer than usual Fitz had commented on how he hadn't seen her that enthusiastic about something before. Sure, discovery always fostered the sort of glee that made her feel like she just couldn't keep it bottled up. It would come pouring out in rushes of observations and hypotheses. He'd mentioned that she would be positively bubbly about it. She knows that he'd been telling the truth. She remembers the thrill that would build up. Science, knowing that she could find out how things worked, brought her a pleasure all its own. It wasn't just what she could find out. It's what she could learn to potentially help other people.

She wonders if she ever looks like that anymore.

One thing is for certain: Skye still has her passion.

Every aspect of how Skye holds herself is filled with joy. She leans close to the small cluster of children whenever she reads through a tense moment and they return the gesture. Each one of them is brimming with the sort of unbridled anticipation that she remembers feeling when her parents would tuck her in for the night. The pair of them had always kissed her forehead and made sure she had her stuffed elephant. Her mother would sit on the bed next to her while her father took to pulling over a chair. They'd build tales of aliens and brave heroines and princes; of wild adventures that she couldn't stop asking questions about; she would hear of wondrous warriors with names like Sif and the headstrong princes they would help. Even beyond the fantastic battles, they'd tell her of science and magic; love and betrayal; discovery of self and others.

The ache of loss bites at her heart. Jemma murmurs an affectionate greeting to Fitz as he comes to find her in the back of the room. Skye hadn't been lying when she said some of the adults enjoyed this as much of the children. All around, various armed guards are sitting and just listening. Coulson sits with May and Hill. Grant's accompanied by Trip and Tony. Ace's father, Mike, has settled himself on the floor with his son as a giant amidst the little ones. Dr. Foster is fidgeting with her hands in her lap. As Jemma watches, she leans over to say something quietly to Pepper. Pepper smiles, responds, returns to listening to Skye. And that's only picking out a few. Having never been to one of these readings before, she'd never realized just how popular they are.

It makes sense. Everyone can use an escape from reality. Skye offers a break with endeavors into fiction and fantasy. Jemma listens. Fitz nudges her with his elbow but she's already smiling when the kids erupt into gasps at a twist in the story. They're so engaged and invested. Jemma can't blame them in the slightest. When Skye reads, she uses her whole body to tell the story along with the words on the pages. She exaggerates her facial expressions, adopts accents that get chuckles out of the audience, gestures with her hands. She puffs out her chest and arches her eyebrows insidiously for the antagonists while sitting a bit straighter and speaking more strongly for the protagonists. Jemma comes back for the next reading as well. And the next.

She comes back until it's a ritual to join everyone at these readings. At first, she's not sure why she keeps returning. The stories are interesting enough, sure, but it's something more than that that pulls her back. They've come enough that no one tries to take their little chairs in the back corner anymore. Most everyone has their spaces that they gravitate to. Jemma thinks that it's because of the comfort of having something familiar. Small as it is it's still worth holding onto. No one argues that.

A dozen more readings later, Jemma's relaxing back into her seat after a long day. Coulson squeezes her shoulder familiarly when he passes by, Commander May nods in greeting, Commander Hill stops to ask how things are going in medical, Clint even pauses long enough to offer his thanks for patching Natasha up recently. Tony cracks a joke to Fitz when he walks by, Skye gives them both hugs, and it's when she's watching Skye make her way to the front of the room with a book under her arm that she has a thought as to why she's come to these readings.

This feels very much like having a family. It's community and connection. What she has with Fitz is beyond words but to form new relationships with these people who appreciate not just her work but her as a person is fresh air she hadn't even realized she craved. This is something that they've both clearly missed if the smile on Fitz's face is anything to go by. She's just reached to experimentally touch Dr. Banner's forearm in a surge of affection as he passes when the children erupt into loud shushing sounds.

Dr. Banner nods down with his best effort at returning the gesture before going to his seat by Captain Rogers and his friends. Agent Carter flashes a smile and pushes the chair towards him welcomingly.

(She insists on using these titles that now carry as much meaning as money. Maybe it's out of respect of their accomplishments. Maybe it's out of a desperation to cling to her own.)

Jemma turns her attention back to Skye who's begun to read the chapter. She's read Harry Potter before. Chances are, a good number of these kids have read his adventures too back in their own comfortable beds. Maybe some of the adults have read them on their own, maybe some have read them to their own children. That doesn't stop anyone from intently listening in when Skye starts at the beginning of the first chapter. Every spoken word makes her feel a little lighter. She thinks that this is what recovery must feel like but she's not sure. She's never had to rediscover herself before.

"I think you have a fan club." Jemma says later when she stops by Skye's room on a whim. Anya Rasputin, a little dark-haired girl, has just departed after throwing her arms around Skye's waist. One day when she'd been checking up on the general health of the group of kids, she'd been foolish enough to ask about their parents. Ace has his father, yes, but apart from him only one other child has a living parent. Commander Hill had mentioned that Anya had been found hiding in a cupboard that stank of human waste and rotting produce. At least she'd had bottles of water and cans of food she'd been able to open. Her parents had told her to hide one day. That had been the last time she'd seen them.

Skye pushes her hair back out of her face and grins. There it is, that lightness. Jemma can't help but to broaden her own smile a little.

"Maybe but I'm sure they'll get sick of me soon enough. All kids get annoyed by their idols eventually." Skye shrugs, dropping back to sit on the edge of her bed.

"What about me?" Jemma takes a step into the room, looking around. Books, an old laptop broken down into its components on the worn wood-textured desk, a couple of notebooks, a large knife, some pens. When she looks back, Skye's just smiling in questioning amusement. "I'm a part of your fan club too is what I mean."

"I have noticed that you and Fitz have been coming to these things for a while now. Have I entranced you with my irresistible charm? Must be nice after a long day of saving lives to come hang out with everyone. It's nice to see that you've chilled out for once. You're just so tense all of the time." Skye tilts her head, hair falling forward over her shoulder.

"I wouldn't say that I've 'chilled out' too much." Jemma finds the appeal of this interaction becoming polluted. Something about the phrasing picks at her slowly closing emotional scabs. It brings uncertainty and, moreover, the fear that she's relaxing too much to the surface. Being at ease is a threat. It's a weakness that could get her killed. Or Fitz. It could get Fitz killed. "It's not like I've no reason to not 'chill out'."

"No, of course not." Skye's backtracking. Her voice is full of reassurance. "It's not like I was saying it as a bad thing. I just meant—"

"Because if you haven't noticed, Skye." Jemma knows she should stop talking. She knows that Skye hasn't meant any harm with her words. She knows there's nothing accusatory in her intention but she feels as thought she's changed for the worse all of the same. Her own voice is sharpened like a fine blade. "There are walking corpses roaming around the Earth murdering anything they can get their fingers on. Not everyone should chill out and just because you're able to 'chill out' and hold story time like nothing's wrong in the bloody world doesn't mean that you should be when there are other things you could be doing to help everyone."

Every word spilling out is another step further over a line she never meant to cross. Skye's gone from apologetic to aghast to betrayed to just plain stony in the span of the seconds it's taken for her to speak. Her face reflects her heart so fluidly that at least she's not difficult to read. Skye doesn't say anything. It seems that she's too speechless to even begin to form words because all she does is pointedly move over to the candle on her desk, lick her finger and press the flame out between her dampened index finger and thumb.

The cue to leave couldn't have been more clear if Skye had shouted at Jemma to get out.

Jemma thinks that she might've preferred that. The attempt to bond with Skye had disastrously. All that she meant to do by stopping by was to try to express how much it means to her to be a part of something with other people. She wanted to thank Skye for taking the time to care for everyone like she did. When she tells Fitz about it, he looks disappointed but doesn't say anything right away. It's not until she's sprawled back on her bed with her face buried in the pillow that he speaks.

"You're allowed to chill out, you know." He says into the dark after he blows out the candle on his desk. He pauses. She waits. "We're allowed to chill out. We're not going anywhere. It's not a bad thing. We can relax."

It feels easier to breathe hearing him speak.

"This is home." She can hear Fitz turning over on his bed. "We're not alone."

Jemma has to rub at her eyes with the back of her hand. When she had done this before, her fingers had been bony and hard from malnourishment. Now they're regaining their softness beneath the wear and tear of calluses. This is home, she repeats to herself silently as she gazes at the ceiling. They're not going anywhere. More importantly, as much as she's tried not to, she cares. Her heart is invested in these people. Maybe that's scarier than anything else. She's not sure how she would deal with losing other people.

As badly as her time with Skye goes, nothing is quite as embarrassingly fumbling as the first time she gets proper interaction one-on-one with Commander May.

It's while she's out by the front gate considering the walkers pushing up against the chain link. Rotted chunks of flesh sheer off with their floundering against the metal, their teeth bare widely, their eyes shot with dark streaks of disease and decay follow her wildly. There are maybe a dozen of them. Miles is on top of the long perch that's been constructed at the very top of the fence for lookouts. He's fingering his gun but making no move to do anything about the Walkers.

Truth be told, she's not sure what she's expecting anyone to do about it. She's never actually spent any extended time around the wall. They have enough soldiers that she's not actually necessary for this job. Her time is better spent with Dr. Banner just as Fitz's is best spent with Tony. Even though they'd all been required to learn how to safely handle a gun, if they're out here where they aren't needed and don't have the confidence in themselves then they'll just get in the way. Miles looks down and notices her watching. Wearing that smug smile, he gestures for her to join him.

She really shouldn't. She doesn't even like Miles but she finds herself scaling up the ladder anyway.

"I thought you weren't allowed to handle a gun anymore." Is the first thing out of Jemma's mouth. There's some pleasure to be found in the fact that his arrogance falters momentarily before he draws himself back up.

"Just because I don't go on runs anymore doesn't mean I'm not good at this. I can handle a gun. No one can argue that." Miles looks back out at the Walkers. Jemma begs to differ but doesn't say so.

"Why don't you—" But she stops her question because he's not looking at the Walkers or even her anymore. He's looking over in the direction that someone's called his name. Grant and Skye are coming over with a sort of purpose that makes her think that this is a regular occurrence. Jemma feels her heart jumping into throat, hot shame rushing to flood her face.

Skye hasn't spoken to her for quite a while. She's tried to apologize several times but Skye just hasn't stuck around long enough to listen. Her departures are generally proceeded by agitated muttering of having to go find some way to be more useful. Jemma's not sure what her job is in the camp but what she does know is that her words seem to have wounded more deeply than she ever expected if the way Skye's body tense under her riot gear at the sight of her is any indication. She's reminded, as she tries to catch Skye's eye and fails, that she misses the infectious smile that had come to Skye so easily. It's a smile that she gives to other people but not to Jemma. Not lately.

"How many?" Grant calls up to Miles. Why is no one else questioning how Miles has gotten himself on duty with a live firearm?

"I've counted thirteen here. Another five down to the left." He points. Grant nods and pulls a machete from his belt. He pulls the strap of his gun over his head and hands it off to Trip who's come over. Skye's doing the same thing with her handgun. Trip takes it from her, winks and smiles at something she says as she drags her long knife out. They can end this quickly enough so why aren't they? Instead, Skye and Grant are disappearing behind one of the trucks pushed up against the fence. The next moment, the Walkers are shifting their attention and stumbling off.

Grant's waves once to Miles who pulls the gun up to rest against his shoulder. Jemma, dry-mouthed, focuses her attention on Skye. Dark, oily hair pulled back and mouth pressed into a thin line, Skye's gripping the knife like it's her lifeline (it is her lifeline) and Walkers are drawing closer. One lunges forward, raking rotten hands at Skye's face, only to be met by the blade plunging into its eye socket. It drops immediately, all unforgiving weight threatening to pull Skye's knife from her grasp. She keeps ahold of her weapon against the odds. Jemma doesn't like the odds at all.

"The bloody hell are you doing?" Jemma finally gasps out. Her imagination floods with the sound of screaming that rips down to her bones and images of blood spurting endlessly from torn arteries.

"We don't kill the Walkers against the fence. They pile up and damage the integrity every minute that they're pressing against it. Can't have that. No weaknesses, Doc, so we have to draw them away before we can get rid of them." The way he says that feels too much like mocking. "These two make a good team anyway. They always get this done the best. Really should've waited for Steve, Bucky and the others though—Yeah, there they come. Our cleaning crew."

"Cleaning…" Jemma can't even bring herself to finish the absurd name. Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes are out joining the effort with only blades. The Walkers that are focused on Grant and Skye fall easily by devastating blows from behind. And then Natasha and Clint are out there as well. Whatever system they have, it seems to work. None of them are ever without someone else watching their backs. They call out to each other when necessary but largely remain silent. It doesn't take but a few minutes of constantly moving for them to take care of the problem fully.

An argument could be made for sending out fewer people to do such a job instead of putting so many at risk. No one's injured but they also have all been given the same protective gear. Going out as a well-practiced team armed with silent weapons and protective gear is taking every precaution that they can. It even makes sense beyond her gut-wrenching urge to demand that Miles use his weapon.

At least, it begins to make sense right up until she tries to find Skye again only to realize that she's drifted a little too far away from everyone else. As protected as she is, Jemma can't stop herself from immediately screaming for Skye when a large Walker shambles out at her exposed back. Skye twists around and then is down flat on her back with gnashing teeth scraping against the thick plastic mask on her helmet. However strong Skye is she wasn't prepared for such a large Walker to come up on her.

Grant is pelting in Skye's direction but Jemma acts without thinking when she wrenches Miles's heavy rifle from his arms, aims and fires. She doesn't see if it hits because it's like being hit by a bull. The recoil staggers her off-balance and her heart sinks through the air right with her until she's landing flat on her back in the dirt. Her head is spinning, blood throbbing against her eardrums, muscles and bones aching in a mass of pain. People are shouting around her but nothing quite gets through beyond the ringing in her skull.

In fact, the only thing that becomes abundantly clear is Commander May standing over her just laying into Miles for having her up there in the first place. She catches words like 'emotional' and 'untrained' along with 'hazard'. And then, again, she's squinting her eyes open only only to find herself greeted very unpleasantly but the sight of Commander May standing in the doorway with not a flicker of amusement on her features.

"We don't fire guns at the wall—No talking.—We don't fire guns at the wall unless it's absolutely and unavoidably necessary. Noise attracts walkers and means we have to send people out more often than we want to in order to clean up the mess. It wastes ammunition that we might one day need. Every bullet counts." May pauses, eyebrow arched. "Was it unavoidably necessary to fire that weapon?"

"I was—" No. No, it wasn't. Jemma clears her throat, fumbling for words. She sounds like a student struggling to explain a poor excuse to a professor. "The Walker was on top of Skye and Grant wasn't getting there fast and the gun was right there—"

"Was. It. Unavoidable?" May's notably unimpressed with her.

"Perhaps… No, but Miles wasn't—Is Skye—" She's not allowed to finish.

"Have you ever fired a rifle before?"

"I—No. No, I haven't. Wait, is Skye—"

"I hope you enjoyed your first and last experience doing so." May nods curtly and heads out of the door. She holds it open just long enough for Skye to step inside. Her expression is bizarrely unreadable. That's not promising at all. Still, her mood isn't nearly as important as the fact that she appears entirely unscathed. Holding back a sigh of relief, Jemma falls back against the pillow. Glorious. Fitz is going to have a field day giving her a lecture about grabbing a gun. She doesn't even like guns.

"Hear you decided to try to steal Miles's gun this time." Skye hovers next to her bed. She doesn't sit down.

This time. As much as Jemma hasn't forgotten nearly being killed, she hasn't realized that Skye's held onto her own similar memory. Cold steel against her palms. The heavy weight of determining life and death. Being feared. Thinking about it makes her uncomfortable. Whatever incompetence Miles has shown, Jemma has now placed herself on a sickeningly even playing field with him. Stupid decisions borne from spikes of fear.

"Did I… You're okay. So I got it?" Excellent speaking, Jemma, well done.

"Nope." Skye's softened. The hard edges Jemma's gotten accustomed to receiving are giving way to more welcome and familiar expressions. "You missed by, like, two feet. Grant took care of it."

"Oh." Hearing that she hadn't even managed to be the slightest bit helpful makes it all the more embarrassing. "I've never really been one for firearms. Never even had to shoot one until—"

"Thank you." Jemma snaps her eyes back to Skye's face in surprise. Skye fidgets with her hands like she's debating on what to do next. Clearly she comes to a decision because she drops down to sit at the foot of Jemma's bed. They sit there in silence before Jemma finds herself bursting out with a rush of words that she knows aren't going to be understood at all. As expected, Skye stares at her in confusion.

"What?"

"I'm sorry. I… I never meant… I'm sorry. Really, I am. I didn't mean what I said. It was cruel and unnecessary and I wasn't thinking, not really, I was just…" She trails off feebly because it's difficult to put into words just what she'd been feeling at the time. While Fitz seems to understand her thoughts and address them without having to hearing them for himself, it's not something that a lot of people just do. That anyone else, really, does. Skye doesn't ask for an explanation though. For that, she's grateful.

Skye stays. Skye is just sitting with her even without speaking. There's no barbs in her eyes or rigidity to her posture. When they next make eye contact after several seconds of awkward silence she even starts to offer a small smile. It's not bright with its usual brilliance but she'll be damned if she won't accept it as progress. It even brings her own smile to her lips in an uncontrollable tugging at the corners of her mouth. It lessens the anxiety that she's been feeling about trying to figure out how to get Skye alone long enough to have a talk about this.

"I know it doesn't change anything. I'm not oblivious or whatever." Her tone is so devastatingly understanding that Jemma can't do anything beyond thickly swallowing back the urge to reassure. Instead, she keeps her silence so that Skye can keep speaking. Staring down at her hands with a sardonic smile that doesn't suit her at all, Skye stretches out her legs along side Jemma's. "I know that reading some stupid book doesn't help anyone. It takes their minds off of things, sure, but it doesn't really do much apart from that. It's pretty pointless."

It's not, Jemma wants to say, it's really not pointless. In fact it appears to be a crucial part of how the whole community has bonded together. Cramming one of the small warehouses all just to listen to Skye read through books most of them are familiar with. It won't save them physically from the Walkers but Jemma's certain that it saves them in other ways. They remember their humanity. They aren't just soldiers and doctors and kids and adults, they're survivors. They're alive and they're all together. Bonding, laughing, smiling, shouting, arguing, forgiving. It's all a crucial part of surviving. Skye helps them keep together. These are all things that she should point out but she doesn't know where to begin.

"I go on runs. I do help outside of reading stupid books for the kids. I go on runs and I do, you know, the stuff with the fence."

"The cleaning crew." Jemma mutters.

"Right. That's Miles's name for it. The cleaning crew. I do that and I'm a runner because Grant gave me all of the training I needed. Melinda too. And John. Couldn't ask for better teachers in… In a massive fucking apocalypse." There's nothing pleasant about the wry twist to her mouth. Not a single spark of her optimism comes to life in her expression. Jemma's realizing as she watches with a heavy pit in her chest that this is a whole new side of Skye that she's not certain she wants to see much more of. Something about the tinge of weariness in Skye's face demands for Jemma to avert her eyes as though she's seeing something that she shouldn't be. "They're the best teachers I've had... Well, ever. The only ones who have ever cared."

It's like she's telling a secret with the new hush to her words. She's talking about herself unprompted and while Jemma wants to insist that it's not necessary, her curiosity is demanding that her tongue remain still. For her openly shared warmth, personal information about Skye isn't easy to come by. Jemma suspects that it's much for the same reason that she herself had gone off on Skye in the first place. Insecurity, fear, unwillingness to form connections that might be ripped away in a shower of screams and spilling organs. Given that she doesn't recognize a 'John' as she goes through the members of their community in her head it stands to reason that it's a relationship that Skye has already lost. She is clearly not without loss despite what her lively personality suggests.

"I should be dead." Skye breathes, leaning her head back to stare at the ceiling for a few moments. Her nails dig into her palms hard. "Seriously, there's no way I would've made it on my own. I was locked in my van for just... God knows how long. I was just in there. I didn't have anywhere else to go and I was stuck in this traffic jam. I tried to get out to go somewhere but there were so many Walkers and so many... So I just locked myself in my van. The nuns would've been so proud of how much I prayed. I think I might've even believed in God for a few minutes when I decided to try taking a look around and found John. I swear it was like... it was like seeing an angel or something. A real life God-sent angel."

"I was at an orphanage for a while when I was a kid. Filled with nuns. I wasn't like at one of those convents or whatever. I'd never have what it takes to be a nun." Skye explains, clearly having noticed the confusion etched across Jemma's face. "Like a belief in God. Don't have that. I never really had it before but after everything... Sort of made it harder to imagine that I'd ever have been expected to have that sort of faith. Faith in an invisible almighty force, I mean. I have faith—" She pauses, looking a little disappointed and surprised in herself. "I had faith in John. He reminded me that I could either sit on my ass and lose it because the world had gone to hell or I could pick myself back up for everyone else and give myself my own purpose."

"When?" Jemma doesn't need to add anything more to the question.

"A couple of months ago, I'd say. About two weeks before we found you and Fitz, actually." Significant puzzle pieces about Skye's behavior clatter into place with this revelation.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened?"

Skye glances upwards and then back down to her hands which have stilled in her lap. Her foot is bouncing agitatedly next to Jemma's hip. This is clearly not a question that she's eager to answer. Jemma waits. Honestly, she expects Skye to make an excuse to leave. She wouldn't blame her for it at all. Sometimes there are just questions that cross lines that shouldn't be crossed.

"The purpose that he gave himself?" Skye clears her throat forcefully. "He wasn't really... With how things are now it can be easy to lose your way, I think. Some people have their loved ones, their friends, family, whatever. We make relationships as much a priority as making it to tomorrow. I think It keeps us sane. It... It sort of tethers us, you know what I mean? No matter how far we go, we can come back if we have that tether. But I guess it doesn't work for that like everyone. John gave himself a purpose for living but it was... Something went wrong."

"With his plan?" Jemma prods gently. She wants to know. Then again, maybe she doesn't know just what information she's asking for.

"With him. Something went wrong with him, I think." Skye sounds so raw in her uncertainty that it makes Jemma ache for her. "Sometimes all of this... It can bring out the worst in people. He used to be one of the big people in charge of our operation."

"Skye, you don't have to talk about this." Seeing Skye like this (like everyone else in camp) is a reality that Jemma doesn't quite know how to react to. Her interest in the subject isn't worth dredging up painful memories that Skye has forgone talking about for her own reasons.

"He shot May. Killed a couple of people who stood up to him when he got it into his head that having a group of people calling the shots was a bad idea. He thought he'd be able to lead best. Decided he could make the hard calls when no one else would. It was..." Skye chokes on a humorless laugh. "We used to have a lot more people. Our guys outnumbered his though. He and his ran away. Wanted me to go with him. But, well, here we are. And here he isn't. So."

No one talks about this clearly. It's a black mark of death and betrayal in their recent history. The wariness with which most people had treated both her and Fitz in their earlier days carries new meaning now. As strangers to their homestead, they'd posed an unknowable risk. Maybe some people hadn't even wanted them to stick around for fear of a repeat occurrence. Skye had found herself cared for and taught by John but still picked herself up from the debris of his violence to offer a better affection and loyalty to them.

Jemma had allowed her fear to bring out a fearful willingness to do things she'd hoped herself never capable of when she stole Skye's gun. She hadn't pulled the trigger but she could have. She would have. If she hadn't thought that Fitz could be okay, her finger would have pulled back on that trigger in hindsight. Some people had the worst brought out in them. Others like Skye kept on going regardless of the monsters roaming their earth.

"You're wonderful. Brave. Kind." Jemma finds her voice just as Skye is getting up to excuse herself. It's important that she say this. Before she loses her nerve, she has to say this. "You matter, Skye. What you do matters. Hanging out with everyone and just reading? It affects people."

"I really don't think it helps anything but thanks anyway." Skye's tired self-deprecating smile threatens to jerk Jemma's heart right from her chest.

"It's helped me." Jemma says. Skye stops in her tracks and stares at her with a curious expression that she can't, for once, quite put her finger on to identify. Whatever it is, it's replaced by a soft, fond smile. Skye bounces on the balls of her feet idly, just looking at her. Then gentle, slightly dry lips are pressing right against Jemma's cheek. Blood pulsing in her ears, Jemma wildly finds herself focusing on just how nice the intimacy feels. Even more disconcerting is the flood of affection that brings the thought of turning her head just an inch and how that might turn this into another situation entirely. It's not unwelcome.

"Thank you, Jem." Skye's gone far too soon.

Fitz spends the evening shooting questioning looks her way. Jemma shakes her head but she can't seem to stop herself from smiling. He doesn't push it.


	4. Chapter 4

Sticking to the medicine of it all seems that it'll be easy especially given the humiliation she'd experienced during that visit to the wall. Plenty of people have to come through the medical bay especially as winter begins to set in in full force. Accident outdoors increase, children and the elderly end up with colds the most often while those amongst their ranks with the most treacherous of jobs seem to be having closer calls when they're out and about only to return to Shield with various injuries.

The ice and snow have rendered their environment more hazardous than usual. Lacking snowmobiles, their people have to trek out either on foot in deep mounds of snow or travel with special caution along the roads. Either way, they inevitably have to disembark from the vehicles to begin scouting out houses and the biggest problem is that they have to travel further and further from home to find new supplies. The further out they go, the bigger the risk is.

If there's a breakdown that can't be quickly repaired, it means that they're stuck out without transportation with no choice but to attempt the walk back on foot. A long walk of miles and miles through treacherous conditions on foot increases the risk of injuries. Never mind if someone actually gets hurt during the walk back and puts the group as a whole at even more risk than they would be facing in any case. These are, right now, only hypotheticals of the things that can very possibly go wrong but they've brought up the necessary discussions of just what to do should it happen.

A suggestion from Fitz during one of their large meetings as a group is that each team take a medic and a mechanic with them. Immediately, this has to be shot down. Their engineers are a precious few in Fitz, Tony, Peter Parker, Karima Shapander, Sarah Vale and Valerie Martin. Medics number even fewer with just her and Bruce making up the ranks. Having this pointed out silences that as a possibility as quickly as it's brought up. The first of several meetings to come is adjourned with no real progress to speak of. They can only take so much time to talk about things before they need to get back to work.

Jemma finds that she wants to speak up but her voice consistently falters in her throat under the eyes of so many other people. Greater than the fear of not being heard is the terror of being heard. All it could take is a few words. Just a few stumbling sentences that people might actually hear. Worse, they might end up agreeing with her. That's what stops her every time without fail. Her lips will part, sticking together dryly, and the words will come together perfectly in her mind because she has always been quick at thinking through her problems even in lieu of the shoddy improvisational skills that make an appearance when she tries to lie.

Ace has the sniffles. It's nothing serious, Jemma assures Mike of this. Bruce confirms the diagnosis of it not being something to worry about. Screaming fills the air of the medical bay and it rapidly becomes difficult to keep a wide-eyed Ace calm enough to drink the bit of cough syrup that she's given him. Bruce hurries over to the source of the ruckus while both Jemma and Mike work on soothing Ace enough to deal with his medicine. At least it doesn't take too long for Mike to convince him that the sooner he takes his medicine, the sooner he can go back outside to play with the other kids.

Mike wastes no time in hurriedly leading his son out of the door while the screaming grows louder from the other end of the room. She's about to ask just what the problem is but the blooded, splintered edge of bone poking out from Seth Dormer's leg answers her unspoken question. He's new to the team of runners if she remembers correctly. Before, he'd been one of the people who drifted between dabbling in helping the engineers and keeping to other various jobs without any real commitment to a specific one until he'd decided to ask to go on supply runs with the runners.

Skye had told her about it. They'd been spending significantly more time together. Fitz, eyeing her one night, had asked in what he'd clearly thought was a casual voice about their increasing closeness. She'd only responded with a shrug and word about them being friends. They are friends. It's an honest answer. Skye continues to check in on her even though they've taken to eating meals with her and Grant and Trip. When Jemma had asked uncertainly about the other people making up the runner teams, Skye had seemed to think that mentioning the newest addition might put her at ease somehow. It hadn't.

"What happened?" She mustn't panic. It's not an option for her to panic. Not in front of his bug-eyed, pale-faced friends who are stammering as though they haven't seen so much blood before. Is there anyone left who hasn't seen far worse than a broken bone? There can't be. Yet Donnie Gill is insistently rambling about something involving one of the abandoned vehicles around the camp and a skateboard that Seth had found on the most recent outing. A skateboard. Jemma realizes, hurrying about with Bruce, that they're telling her that the reason for this injury is a mixture of stupidity and boredom.

"We were just trying to have some—We… We thought he'd be able to do it! He said he'd be able to do it!" Donnie is gasping. Jemma has no patience for it. A skateboard and foolishness have this young man on the table with a bone sticking from between flaps of skin. A skateboard, too much downtime, and foolishness. She wants to snap that maybe if they'd been making themselves useful instead of doing dumb stunts then they wouldn't be in this mess using valuable medical supplies on an injury that needn't have ever happened. Another time, she can say it. Another time. Maybe.

Her night is filled with renewed screaming. She tries to close her ears to it but it demands to be hear, reverberating in her mind. Seth screaming with his broken leg, her classmates screaming under snapping jaws and tearing fingers. Seth screaming, broken bones, classmates screaming, snapping jaws, Seth screaming, her parents screaming, Seth screaming, Fitz crying as he huddles against her, Seth screaming, Seth screaming, her parents, Seth screaming, dozens of people crying out, Seth screaming, Seth, Seth, she's not sure who's screaming anymore and peace only comes when Fitz awakes her with his shuffling about.

Jemma finds that her day doesn't go any better than the previous one. Without anesthesia, they can't operate on the broken bone. So far Seth's had to suffer through a night of being does by large amounts of common sleep aids. He's singlehandedly put a big dent in their supply of sparingly used painkillers and antibiotics. Doctors would usually operate on this sort of injury and put in a pin or have casts waiting. They would have vast supplies of staff and resources and he would be in safe hands meant for orthopedic work. All of that is little more than a fantasy.

The situation only gets more desperate when a teenage boy is brought in by her friends with a similarly foolish story to Seth's. Jamie Madrox is fourteen. He has shaggy brown hair, pale skin, brown eyes, and a lanky figure with too short of clothes. He has the body of a boy growing too fast for his parents to keep up with. (He doesn't have parents anymore.) He's young and stupid and he'd decided, after goading from his friends, to climb up the wall to try and be a big shot. It'd been fine until he'd tripped and fallen off to land practically on top of a Walker. He's fourteen years old and he has a gaping wound in the side of his head where a Walker has gnawed his ear off along with part of his face. He's unconscious, moaning softly, and Jemma thinks that's for the best because Bruce stops her from bandaging up his wounds.

"It's going to get infected!" Jemma insists, pushing against him furiously. "God only knows what bacteria those things have in their mouths."

Bruce doesn't let her get to work. In fact all he has to say, even with the kid's pair of friends with him, is, "He's already infected. Stop, Jemma."

He's not looking at her. His face is twisted by the desperate tiredness that she's grown so used to seeing. The lines of his face are drawn deeply like vast crevices. She wonders if she hsas the same dark bags under her eyes. It wouldn't be surprising. Jemma puts the bandages and ointments and medications back where they belong in the cabinet. Bruce must have something else in mind. She knows in her heart what the verdict on such a matter will be but this boy is just fourteen and made a dumb decision. Just one dumb decision. "Go get Melinda or Maria. Phil, Victoria, Nick. Any of them. You two, just leave. Get back to doing something helpful around camp. Please."

By the time she returns with both Commander Hill and Coulson in tow their population has decreased by three. There are already people crowded around. Some are aghast while others show little emotion at all. Seth and Jamie have both been stabbed through the eyes to not just kill them but to also keep them from reanimating. Bruce is slumped against the wall with his head forward. The back half of his skull is an open hole courtesy of the gun still between his lips.

(Thinking back on it, she realizes that she had heard an odd sound upon exiting the building but hadn't put together that it was a muffled gunshot.)

The medical team is down to one. Without Bruce, she's the only chance they have when they're sick or injured. Their welfare as a ground is dependent on her. If something happens to her then they'll be left to whatever mediocre knowledge they have to take care of each other. It's this fact, harsh and overwhelming, that finally prompts her to speak up at the next meeting when they come together a couple of days later.

"Everyone should get medical training." Jemma speaks up when eyes turn to her. She doesn't allow her words to seize up in her throat this time. When in doubt, offer education and hope for the best. "Just like everyone gets basic firearms training, everyone should get medical training. Especially the runners."

There are things that can, and likely will, go wrong with this plan of action. Some might freeze up in the moments that they're needed. Others might end up with the opposite reaction of over-treating and wasting precious resources. Still others might bite off more than they can chew to the detriment of their patients. There are, she supposes the same holds true for everything, a lot of risks inherent to trying to teach a bunch of scared people in an environment unforgiving of mistakes. As she has feared that they would so many times before, they listen to her and accept her plan. She doesn't even know if it's the right one.

Their acceptance of her suggestions feels very much like she's accepting a weight onto her shoulders. What if she doesn't teach them quickly or efficiently enough? What if her methods of doing things gets someone killed? When she passes by any of their leaders during her days, she finds that she doesn't envy their jobs in the slightest. There is no clear cut right call to be made but they're expected to do it all of the time. She and everyone else trusts them to make the best decisions.

Skye is among the first after Fitz to show up to start learning. Grant, Trip, Bucky, May, Hill, Hand, Natasha, Clint, Steve are next. Even Miles trickles into the room after a few weeks though he's admittedly paying more attention to Skye than he is to her trying to show him how to properly stitch a wound. There's a part of her that doesn't blame him as she glances over in Skye's direction. Skye has taken quickly to tasks that demand quick reflexes and dextrous fingers. She moves with the sort of intentional elegance of someone who has spent a lot of time working with her hands. It's been months and Jemma still doesn't know much about Skye's past.

Jemma entertains the idea of Skye as a musician when she's proudly demonstrating how her technique has become so much cleaner. Her stitches are tight and almost completely uniform. It's not the same progress of May, Hill or even Natasha but damn if it isn't significant. Her hands move carefully and it's easy to imagine those same fingers strumming the strings of a guitar. She wonders what Skye's singing voice is like. Maybe one day she'll convince Skye to sing for her.

Fitz, having already had a shaky base of knowledge from what Jemma's insisted on teaching him, excels in dealing with medications as well as most of the hands-on work. Only 'most of' because he doesn't enjoy doing anything that involves blood if he doesn't have to. For survival, it's one thing. When a Walker's coming at them then it's a different story. But pus and blood oozing out of infected sores? That's what sends him to the opposite side of the room, his face twisted in an expression that makes her certain that he's keeping himself from vomiting.

She's told him time and again that he'll have to get over this aversion of his but that can happen later. He still has time to indulge in it so she doesn't try to force him out from his comfort zone. Not yet. Others handle the sight of nasty infections quite a bit better. Skye's easily the best with the children when they come in. Unfortunately, this is becoming more and more often. The visitors that come even more often than the children are the sparse few elderly that are around.

(Jemma finds this especially unfortunate as she takes inventory of their supplies. Antibiotics, bandages, pain relievers, decongestants, antiseptics. Everything that possibly could be running low is running low. She spends a good hour more than she needs to rechecking every supply to make sure that she hasn't missed anything. Her stomach twists into knots when she confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that her inventory is devastatingly accurate.)

"I want—" Jemma tries to keep the tremor out of her voice when she catches May, Hand and Hill after their time in the medical bay. They don't even glance at each other but she still gets the feeling that they're somehow communicating without words. She's not even sure if she wants to ask the question that she's voicing right now. Taking care of people and teaching others to do the same has been working out very well so far. "Could I learn more about shooting? Beyond the basics, I mean?"

"When you sound more confident about that." May says without a second of hesitation.

Maybe it's not the answer that they would have given someone else but Jemma just nods. She can't argue against that restriction considering that the last time she'd used a gun hadn't gone quite according to plan. With an inconsistent and wavering confidence around guns even at the best of times, it only stands to reason that others might not want her to jump into learning about them just yet. She's shakier around them than even Miles who, it turns out, had been telling the truth when he said he's a good shot. At a distance, anyway. In close quarters with little visibility and lots of corners to check, Jemma's still not placing any bets on him.

The moment that she learns enough about shooting to become good with a gun, she knows that they'll ask her to carry one. They aren't ready for that just yet after her panicked display at the wall. Truthfully, neither is she. Sticking to the medicine is okay for right now. She doesn't need to carry a weapon beyond her knife. Having a gun in medical after Bruce isn't something she's keen on trying. It's too convenient. Not for her but it might be for others. There are any number of people whose eyes are just as listless, whose bodies ache just as much, whose hope is just as dwindling. A gun provides a way out that she doesn't want to offer. It's their choice but she doesn't want to be the one to give them the access.

Skye makes a habit of being the first one to show up for her designated time to learn from Jemma. Without fail, she always arrives with an encouraging smile. There's always a moment where Skye's hand will find hers. Their fingers will intertwine, she'll squeeze gently and then she'll pull away. Every single time. Jemma in the past hasn't been the biggest fan of these overt displays of affection outside of little touches that come so naturally with Fitz. She finds that doesn't mind these moments with Skye even so.

The warm, messy tangling of fingers even serves to bolster her confidence during the many moments that it wavers while so many eyes are on her and waiting for her instructions. Fitz notices these small details immediately. Jemma notices his eyes following Skye thoughtfully when he doesn't think that either of them are looking. (If the pink around Skye's ears and defiant lift to her chin are any indication, she definitely notices at least some of the time.) He broaches the subject with her suddenly one evening while she's in the middle of reading. It's been several weeks and, admittedly, Jemma has been waiting for this inevitability.

"So." Fitz idly fiddles with his fingers. She can see his face painted with the same thoughtfulness with which he regards Skye.

"Hm." Jemma hums in acknowledgement. She's staring a the same place on the page, waiting. Even scanning over the next few sentences doesn't have any effect beyond letting her realize just how much she isn't processing right now.

"Skye." Fitz at least isn't trying to be coy about this.

"What about her?" Jemma, on the other hand, isn't sure what he's waiting for her to say.

"I really like her, don't you?" He doesn't wait for her to answer. This suits her just fine because she can't think of an indifferent enough response off of the top of her head. "She's a wonderful girl. Not just wonderful, I mean… She's sort of brilliant. Amazing, you know? Even with everything that's happened in the world, she's still… She's a good person. A really good person. We're lucky to have her in our lives. Not to say just her because we have so many people now but… She's really pretty awesome. She's good. She's… yeah, good."

"She is." Jemma mutters, smiling slowly. She is definitely all of that and more. It's downright stupid how uncomfortable and flustered she feels about that smile to the point that she quickly changes her expression to force it into something more impassive.

Fitz nods.

She carries the conversation with her unwillingly. It nags at the back of her mind no matter how much she wants to avoid thinking about it because, as much as she begins to look forward to seeing Skye right at the start of her shifts in medical, it brings up questions possibly be appropriate. Not even just inappropriate but pointless. Very pointless, she reminds herself when she glances over towards where Miles is working with Skye. He looks at her like she's the only star in the sky. He jokes with her and she laughs. Jemma would never be able to throw herself into the middle of a situation that clearly seems happy. There's not enough happiness left in the world to go around disrupting others for her own gain.

(Skye's such a beacon of light that she deserves every happiness she can get.)

Besides, she's not even certain of what she would want even if she could properly sort through her thoughts. Things with Skye are confusing. Her affections are so commonplace and freely given that there's nothing to say that how she treats Jemma is any different than how she treats anyone else. Even at the very start, Bruce had once told her of just how friendly Skye was. The more that Jemma thinks about Skye and Fitz's curious smile, the more she wonders which moment has led to this change in how she looks at Skye.

They're friends. Of course they're friends, but friendship doesn't generally lead to stealing glances at the other person while they're doing perfectly average things. Jemma catches herself doing it at the strangest moments. During story time when she making faces at the kids, while Skye's furrowed her brow as she practices her stitches, when she's scratching at the back of her neck during moments of discomfort, when she's picking idly at her teeth while she listens to something that someone's saying during meals. Jemma will realize that she's been staring at her for far too long than is acceptable and, even worse, that she's always, without fail, smiling when she does it.

"You seemed to enjoy the story tonight." Skye calls to her one night as she passes by her room. Jemma stops, skin rapidly heating up, and self-consciously rubs her palm with her thumb. Staring at Skye has at last gotten her caught in the act. Skye had looked over in her direction and Jemma had jerked her eyes away as though that was somehow less suspicious than meeting her gaze.

"It was a good story." Jemma almost feels defensive until Skye curls her finger playfully to invite her into the room. She should go to bed. Fitz might even be wondering where she is. Her desire to talk to Skye for a bit longer overrules the little voice urging her to go to bed. Jemma hovers by the end of Skye's bed right up until she's guided down to sit on the bed by fingers wrapped around her own.

"I've been meaning to tell you for a while." Skye flops back against her pillows. She's toying with Jemma's fingers, forehead creased. "This thing with the teaching everyone medical skills was, like, a really good idea. It seems really obvious but, hey, hindsight and 20-20, right? But not the point. Uh, right, I just wanted to say thank you. For speaking up about it and for being willing to take the task of teaching everyone on. I know it can't be easy to have pretty much volunteered for all of that responsibility and I think it was… brave. I think you're brave. And I'm grateful for everything. I hope you know that."

"That's very sweet." Jemma clears her throat, smiling uncertainly as she tears her eyes away from Skye's. "Might I ask where this rush of gratitude has come from? Is everything… Are you alright?"

"Yeah." The answer's underwhelming to say the least. Skye seems to realize that she's doesn't sound convincing because she responds to Jemma's frown with a little shrug. "I mean, we're going on a supply run tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure I told you."

Jemma's heart sinks and nausea seats itself right in the pit of her stomach. Whatever reasoning she's expecting, this isn't it. It makes Skye's thanks feel more final. It even feels horribly like a sort of goodbye. But she's overanalyzing it. They go on runs plenty and they always come back without fail. It's always dangerous but no one's died in months so it'll be okay. Skye's always okay.

"You'll be fine." Jemma says more confidently than she feels.

"That's not—" Skye wrinkles her nose. Cutting herself off, they remain in silence long enough for Jemma to wonder if she's worn out her welcome by saying the wrong thing. Apparently, this isn't the case because what Skye says next forces all of the air from her lungs. "Stay with me tonight?"

"What?" Surely, she hasn't heard that correctly.

The bewilderment must show on her face because Skye clarifies. "I don't mean like—I just don't want to be alone. That sounded a lot less weird in my head and I hate being alone and I like having you around and especially tonight I don't want to be alone but, God, no, you don't have stay or anything. I'm being weird. That was a weird thing to say, wasn't it?"

"No! It's fine, really. I understand." Jemma says quickly. "I just need to let Fitz know so he doesn't worry."

Fitz, it turns out, goes from looking relieved to see her to positively smug when she informs him of the reason for why she won't be in the room tonight. He has no right to wear that big of a grin and he has even less right to make kiss noises when she turns tail, red-faced, and makes to leave the room. Her pillow, all rumpled in the corner of the bed, demands that she stop. And, really, if Fitz can't control his childish nonsense then how can she be expected to hold herself back from lobbing the pillow across the room at his face? It's only fair.

Considering the amount of times that they've slept side-by-side he really should have a clearer concept of friends being there for each other. Platonically. No romance involved whatsoever. Not even a little bit. God knows she's never looked at him that way. Plenty of people had attempted to set them up romantically but beyond finishing each other's sentences and talking science together, they'd always had the common ground of not being interested. The sibling dynamic between them had developed too naturally between them for there to be anything else. Fitz melodramatically protests her mistreatment of him but doesn't waste any time making himself comfortable with his newly acquired extra pillow.

("Thanks, Simmons! Tell Skye I say hi if you're not too busy.")

Out of the ten minutes it takes between the time she leaves and the time she returns, seven of those minutes are spent standing outside of Skye's door when her feet refuse to unglue themselves from the floor. Conversation topics and figuring out how to best get herself out of the bed without disturbing Skye if she needs to are at the forefront of her thoughts while she tries to prepare herself. Even though it's meant to prevent her from turning into a babbling idiot all that's achieved is that she realizes, squeezing her eyes closed in embarrassment, that she's thinking of conversation topics for going to sleep. Taking a deep breath, Jemma tries to shake off the nonsensical nerves building up so that she can just walk into the room already.

"You alright?" Skye's already curled up with her back against the wall and the blanket pulled up to her armpit. "Everything good with Fitz? Hope he's not too upset about me stealing you away for the night."

"Fitz is fine." And far too pleased with himself over nothing but there's no need for her to tell Skye that.

None of her brainstormed conversational pieces are needed. With the candle blown out, she's not given a lot of time to adjust her eyes to the dark before Skye reaches out to guide her to the bed. Even expecting the warmth doesn't prepare her for being pressed up against another body so closely. It's happened dozens, dozens of dozens, of times before. For a couple of months at school there'd been a stretch of time where she spent more nights curled in bed with her boyfriend than she had in her own bed. Truthfully, it hadn't been a serious relationship though she had believed that it was but there'd been that comfort in being with someone. Feeling wanted is magnificent. With Fitz, it was about security and love and knowing that they never had to be alone.

Skye makes to move her arm, jerkily stops and backtracks. Jemma shifts her feet only to have them bump back into Skye's toes so that she has to hastily apologize in a hushed whisper. The surprisingly awkward dance of trying to better make themselves comfortable conforming to each other's bodies continues on in silence for longer than Jemma bothers to keep track. It gets to the point that it crosses her mind that maybe this hasn't been the brightest of her ideas. She wants to be comfortable but she also doesn't want to infringe on Skye's personal space. They're in the same bed but she's said nothing to invite explicit touching no matter how platonic. Finally, with a huff of exasperation, Skye boldly slips her arm around Jemma's waist and presses closer into her back. Neither of them comment on it.

Her imagination does as it always likes to and conjures up faint sounds of growling moans in her ear instead of allowing her peace. The shadows don't jump out at her from the corners of the room only because she refuses to open her eyes again. Skye spreads her fingers out against her stomach, curling her fingers against the fabric of her shirt. It's such a small thing but she smiles nonetheless. The affection in Skye's actions is enough to remind her, again, that nothing is about to come in and kill her. Not right now. Not here. They all shut and lock their doors at night just in case of a breach. Right now, they're safe. And it's okay to just relish these moments. Jemma nuzzles into the pillow.

God knows that this arrangement is making it easier for her to drift into sleep. By the time her limbs feel heavy and her breath slow, she's settled her hand over Skye's wrist and their legs are intertwined with no remaining regard for an illusion of personal space. It's because of just how closely they're pressed together that the morning proves to be a jarring experience. She rolls over groggily, throwing her arm over the empty space next to her. Skye's already gone without so much as a goodbye.

"Good night, Simmons?" Fitz asks with the worst go at pretending to be casual.

"It wasn't like that. She didn't want to be alone. We're friends." Jemma's not sure is the clarification is less important than it used to be or more important than ever. Time doesn't allow for her to dwell on it too long. Within minutes of entering medical she's joined by Pepper Potts. She's sick with something. Sneezing, coughing, feverish, swollen lymph nodes in the neck. Seems like a virus. It might even be influenza. The problem is that they all live in close enough quarters that these ailments spread through everyone. Rinsing hands isn't nearly as effective as washing with soap would be but there's only so much that they can do.

The winter's been rough on their stock of antibiotics. Every time she hands them out is another question of if she's doing the right thing. Even now as she shakes one into her palm from an almost empty orange bottle, her thoughts race through the people she'd done the same for before Pepper. Faces, names, illnesses or injuries. Though she can justify every single one it doesn't make it any easier. Soon, especially if the worst case scenario of this infection spreading comes true, they're going to run out.

Pepper talks to her and while Jemma hums softly in acknowledgement, she can't take her eyes off of the capsules rolling around in their container. There's no other doctors to consult with unless she wants to confer with a faint bloodstain on a wall. Their council of leaders have left the decision up to her when she mentioned the state of their medicinal supplies. Hill had mentioned that it would be up to her to make the hard calls. There's nothing easy about being a leader just as there's nothing easy about being a doctor. They'd known the gravity of the decisions they left on her shoulders.

Pepper squeezes her shoulders with a hoarse thanks before she leaves just as Hill and Clint come in to start their tutoring. They're talking idly, wiping off their recently rinsed hands on the towels just inside the door. It's mundane. Neither of them do more than offer a quick greeting but it uproots her feet from where they've been frozen to the spot. Jemma rushes by them so that she can go after Pepper.

"Grab a couple of the face masks today. In the cabinet. Go." Jemma instructs. She can't risk either of them being compromised by this. "Pepper!"

Pepper turns to look at her, confused.

"I'm afraid that I need to ask you to go into quarantine. To try to keep this from spreading." Using the right mix of firmness and reassurance in her tone comes with surprising ease. Pepper nods and Clint comes up next to her to press a mask into Jemma's hand. This is the right call but there's nothing easy about isolating someone like this. Quarantine with an infectious virus means no visitors. They just can't spare the masks that visitations would demand.

Tony's none too pleased about the development. His frown deepens at the end of every evening. His lips harden with every refusal to allow him inside of quarantine. His understanding lessens no matter how many times Pepper presses against the door to speak to him through its heavy wood. Jemma can't blame him no matter how tired she becomes of his acrid glares. The icy doorknob shuts him out from Pepper but he's not alone in this new situation.

Time passes too quickly for her. Every day brings a familiar face to medical. Jane Foster takes Anya's temperature on one day and Hill has to shut her away on the next. Steve closes the door on Bucky and Peggy. Fury goes into quarantine next, ashen and sweating profusely. People come to find her in her room until she has to take to wearing her medical mask around her neck so that she can just pull it up when they ask for help. Miles comes with shaking, damp hands and dark rings beneath his eyes. When Jemma apologizes profusely after he drops, exhausted, onto one of the many cots that have been crammed into the room, he doesn't have enough energy to respond. Any words that he actually thinks to say are shut in with him by the thud of her closing the door.

Sam Wilson strokes back another sick child's hair, a couple of their elderly fall ill with hacking coughs and excessive phlegm and by the time a moment comes to allow her rest, Jemma can't help but to think that the trickster of time is making it feel that it is also passing far too slowly. Illness has demanded her attention but has failed to keep her from noting Skye's continued absence.

Dawn on the fifth day brings with it the expectation that their camp will be complete soon. Runs never take longer than a couple of days. Every shuffle of shoes against linoleum in the hallway catches her attention. There are words she's been trying to put together just so for when Skye comes back. Maybe they aren't perfect but they're the best her stressed mind can do since she thinks that honesty has to be the best way forward. If she's seeing something that isn't there then she surely needs to know. It's only right that Skye be aware that they aren't getting the same things out of their relationship so that they can move forward beyond it.

Night comes. It falls on the addition of three more to quarantine and a snide remark from Tony before he departs. Fitz keeps mentioning Grant just as much as he mentions Skye but it's only the fifth day. Wait, sixth day now. It's only the sixth day and it's nothing to worry about. Jemma sleeps the best that she can (restlessly, uneasily, with a loneliness she hasn't noticed until sleeping with Skye) and knows with certainty that Skye will be back in medical soon.

Hill comes, more sick people have to be tended to, May takes temperatures, Steve patches up minor injuries, Sam comforts children who are scared and miss story time, Tony keeps his complaints quiet at Pepper's demand, and Skye still isn't back. There's no story time, there's no Grant, there's no Trip, there's no Skye.

"Do you think they're okay?" Fitz asks when they're up getting dressed on the ninth morning. "They have to be okay, right? They're clever and they know how to take care of themselves. You've taught them—"

"Of course I've taught them." Jemma snaps, fingers freezing tangled in her shoelaces. "I've taught them as effectively as I can. They're smart and Skye knows what she's doing. They all do. It's cold and snowy and there's plenty of ice on the roads. If they got into trouble then they also found a way out of it."

"I didn't mean—"

"They'll be back." He hasn't meant to offend her. Never has he accused her of putting only a half-effort into any matter. As important as this is it never would have crossed his mind to suggest she hasn't done the absolute best that she can. He'll know what this means to her. Teaching others to care for themselves and the people around her, he'll know exactly how the responsibility eats away at her heart. Fitz proves this knowledge by coming up to kiss her temple with a soft apology that he doesn't need to say. She should be the one apologizing but she doesn't. What if her best teaching methods just aren't good enough? Even worse, what if she's been holding back out of fear of failure without realizing it? What if this isn't her best effort?

Maybe it's an absurd thought but it's there nonetheless. What if they've run into trouble on their run. Out in the world they might've run into any number of horrendously dangerous threats. Walkers come in larger groups, their car might've crashed, or their guns could've jammed at an important moment. They might've not even been able to get to their guns if they'd been trying to keep quiet. Skye would always go to her knife first. She's smaller than Grant or Trip and not as physically strong but also quicker and more agile. She'd go for her knife to keep from making noise. With a couple of Walkers that's just fine but what if they've run into more than just a couple?

Even worse, what if they've run into people? As much of a danger as the undead pose, the living pose even greater threats. The world can't have left people as welcoming as the ones here. Jemma hadn't been. Reality had caught her in its fingers, refusing to let her go. She thinks that she'd been standing right on the edge. Of sanity, of the person she'd used to be, of a million different things. The specifics don't matter anymore. All she's confident of is that she'd been right there about to step over a line.

Fitz kept his goodness in the face of it all. His faith in people persisted where hers had failed. It was a sort of bravery she simply hadn't been able to find in herself. The strength to keep believing in other people comes more naturally to him than to her. At one point they'd been on the same page in that trust. It'd been easier to hand out back then. Everyone just wanted to survive. A couple of weeks into the continuing devastation of the country, she and Fitz had run into two other small groups. Fitz had wanted to rush over to them with the idea of strength in numbers and that they could all help each other. Jemma had been the one to throw out her arm and drag him into cover by the shoulders.

It'd only been minutes before the meeting between the other two groups erupted into violence announced by the ringing of gunshots. The men of the second group had killed the men of the first. Jemma had pulled Fitz away quickly. The screams of the women and whoops of the offending men had told them all that they needed to know about what happened next. Their world was unkind. There is no law, no order, no punishments no matter how atrocious the crimes. Fitz had been just so horrified, rambling about not all of them were like that. It's possible that not every survivor is that devoid of humanity but it doesn't change the fact that enough of them are. People are dangerous.

Wiping trembling palms against her legs, she tries her best to put the images from her mind. Skye's okay. Grant and Trip are okay. People are dangerous but those three are smart in their own ways. They're resourceful. They're survivors.

(Everyone is a survivor until the day that they aren't.)

She tells herself over and over that they'll be okay even when Hill, May, Hand and Coulson are speaking with Fury through the door as best as they can. The medical situation's rapidly approaching dire territory. The meeting is awkward but it's all that they can manage without risking exposure. Only Jemma and whomever is working in medical with her—now narrowed down to the most talented of the camp since everyone has been taught the basics—are allowed inside quarantine to take care of everyone. Others tend to take the night shifts in rotation to relieve the brunt of the stress from Jemma's shoulders.

It's not unusual for Jemma to be awoken by footsteps thumping against the floors or doors clanging shut. Fitz moans from his bed on the opposite side of the room. Squinting in the light of the moon, she can see him grabbing the pillow to pull over his head. Smiling sleepily, she curls closer into her own pillow.

"Back to sleep, they'll quiet down soon." Jemma mumbles into the darkness of the room.

"Yeah, yeah, I bloody well know—"

An explosion shatters the night's calm with a flash of blinding light, debris smashes through their window and their beds tremble with the force of the blast. Fitz is up before she is, swearing under his breath while repeating over and over that he's told the kids a million times not to screw around with the fuel tanks in engineering. He seems so confident in that being the problem that Jemma's convinced. His brow is furrowed, his fingers fumbling through sleep to tie his shoelaces. The fuel tanks. Damn, someone must've slipped up on monitoring the guns or some foolish teenager decided it'd be fun to play around in engineering.

"Do you need some help?" Jemma offers. She's not waiting for an answer. Hand is going to lose her mind over this infraction. Fuel is so precious. They can't afford to waste it away through childish shenanigans. Especially considering that the council's debating on sending out another team on a scavenging run. Almost two weeks without a word from their people has made them think that the worst has happened. Jemma knows better. They're still alive. Everyone is just jumping to conclusions too quickly. They'll be back, everyone will see that. She just has a feeling about it.

(That feeling might well be denial.)

The thoughts are torn from their position of importance by the popping of gunshots. Shouting, gunshots, screaming, another explosion. The both of them should be fleeing from the building. At one point Jemma had insisted that they always go in the opposite direction of any gunshots they heard. Better to move away from armed people than towards them.

The bed's not soft. It's firm. Some of the pillows are a little flat. Her fingers dig into the mattress. The blankets are ragged at the edges. The floor is cold against her feet and rough where the carpet begins. The fibers are bumpy, curled in on themselves. She remembers picking idly at carpets like this when she had been bored in class at a young age. Teachers enjoyed her once they realized why she was so distracted but before then they'd called her a distraction to other students for the fact that she just couldn't find it in herself to fully pay attention to the information she already knew. Information retention had always been a natural part of who she was. That trait coupled with an avid love for learning meant that she stayed ahead of her classmates even if that wasn't the purpose of why she wanted to learn.

Almost funny that the world outside is exploding into what she can only describe as the fires of hell from the roaring booms and flashes of light that rock the ground beneath her feet. Stunned, ears ringing, she realizes that Fitz is pulling at her arm urgently. When had he picked up his weapon? Jemma staggers to her feet. She finally looks out the window in time to see the barn holding their livestock come crashing down in flames and smoke. Ace and Anya love those goats. Ace even has a favorite chicken that he's named Zelda.

Ace with his dirty hands and bright smile and polite manners. Jemma has her shoes shoved on and knife in hand. There are others already sprinting down the hallways with machetes and knives and handguns. She can hear shouting from downstairs. And crying. Children crying. Gunshots, louder and closer than before; they're cracking against her eardrums as violently as bullets through flesh. The screaming begins to crescendo in like an orchestral piece she's never before wanted to hear, tearing through her stumbling thought as she bolts out of the door at the bottom of the stairwell into the hallway where she can get to quarantine. She needs to get the sick out but Fitz reaches out to jerk her backwards.

There are people moving with automatic weapons poised at their shoulders right in front of the room down the hall.

"I've got it open, go! He says everything goes until his word! Toss it in!" The unfamiliar voice lets her know before they jerk open the door. One of the figures lets out a whooping laugh, plucking something from his waist to toss through the slightly open door. They all rush away curiously but Jemma doesn't understand. She has to go get everyone out. If there are people still in there, she has to evacuate them. This is her job. They matter. They're her people. She's barely on her third step down the hallway when the room explodes outwards in a blast of sound and light and debris.

"Attention, Fort Lewis!" A magnified electronic voice immediately brings an end to at least part of the gunfire. Is that a megaphone? Fitz is leading her out of the building but she's realizing that this hole in the building certainly wasn't there when she went to bed the night before. It's a gaping wound of brick and mortar. Cracked stone bares down like jagged teeth and the structure groans enough to hurry her exit before it can swallow her whole. "It's wonderful to join you all here again after some of you unceremoniously abandoned me to die."

The voice is too cheerful. Jemma slips and Fitz catches her by the shoulder. His warning to keep her eyes on him comes too late when she drops her gaze to see what she's slipped on.

"Look at me, Jem. Jemma, look. Look at me." Fitz whispers urgently.

One of her professors used to keep brains of various animals in jars. It'd been a fascinating practice, honestly. Being able to just stare at the squishy, fragile matter that directed actions, emotions, memories and more felt like staring at the night sky on a clear night. Endless possibilities in the stars of neurons piled together unseen to the naked eye. And microscopes opened vast new worlds of discovery and observation. The brain was a magnificent creation. It's magnificent and she's stepped on it. There's a corpse by her feet, skull open and gray matter is on her shoes with blood. The dark, thick curls on the head look like Ace's.

"I'm sorry." Jemma whispers faintly. This can't be real. Any moment, she'll wake up. This person will be on their feet and their brain will be perfect in their head. They will hug and laugh and cry and be happy and angry and sad. And alive. They'll be alive. "I'm so sorry."

"You can call this karmic justice for those who decided that they had the right to decide who deserved shelter and who didn't." The voice blares again to raucous cheers and a renewed burst of gunfire. "For anyone else, those who wish to surrender will be spared. You have nothing to fear. Skye, Grant and Antoine already have. Smart kids. Just consider this a limited time offer. All this partying is attracting our hungry friends."

A braver person—a leader—would take the words as a challenge, wouldn't they? Someone with a heart for justice would go out and shoot this monster between the eyes. A rescue operation would be mounted and, yes, her first impulses have her walking in the direction of the voice in the hope of catching a glimpse of the woman who has been occupying her thoughts for far too long now but Fitz stops her. A hero would rip through the enemies and Walkers alike, sweep their captured companions out of harm's way and begin the process of reclaiming their damaged base. It's the story that television would champion and books would illustrate in exquisite detail to have the readers on the edge of their seats.

They're moving as quietly as they can towards the fence and Jemma wishes desperately, looking over her shoulder, that she was a protagonist in a book. As the unassuming heroine, her author would write her turning events in her favor through a deus ex machina. Skye would be back with her and Fitz safely. Maybe she would redeem her failure from what feels like a lifetime ago by making an amazing shot with a rifle from one of her dead friends. The bad guy would be conquered.

Fitz prods her sharply and points. May, face cut up and a weapon slung over her shoulder, has just emerged from the foliage ahead with Hill. Between them is one backpack on Hill, two firearms, and five sharp weapons. Her author would compile a way for those specific items to be the key to fixing their situation. May beckons them closer, looking back cautiously the way that they'd come from. There's screaming from the camp and groaning from somewhat nearby but this is life. The real world demands that they escape. May and Hill clearly know this. They've been taken by surprise and cut down so rapidly that there's no chance of fighting back here. And if what Jemma's assuming from the expressions on their faces is true, no one is going to be spared if they're found.

"Natasha and Clint already headed this way." Hill speaks barely above a whisper. Jemma strains to hear her over to pounding of her blood in her ears. "We're going to join them. Stay quiet, stay low. Don't let anyone see you."

"Skye…" Jemma croaks out suddenly. "Grant and Trip… Did you see—?"

"They're not there willingly." May mutters darkly. "Garrett's lapdogs have guns pointed at them. We have to go. Now."

"There could be others like us. There could be others alive! We just—" Fitz starts, voice pitching higher.

"No. If we go looking, we're all dead."

This isn't a book. Jemma nods numbly.

Slipping through a cut section of the fence to join up with Natasha and Clint feels nothing like a victory. Only right, she supposes, pausing as the others move quietly a little onward. It's not one. Why should it feel like anything other than a retreat. They're not lining up in front of a firing squad but this is a sort of surrender all of the same. The life they've been accustomed to is dead and buried beneath the corpses of people they care about.

"Babe, I see you—" Natasha's on the dirty-faced, smug man in a minute before he can raise his gun at them. Jemma thinks that it's out of shock that he can't react before she snaps his neck. Maybe she's special forces of some kind. Whatever skills she has, they're going to serve them well. His abrupt stop doesn't go unnoticed by another of Garrett's nearby lackeys. Having been facing the brightness of the fire, he's squinting into the dark their way.

"Bro, you alright? Hey! Remember that you don't get first dibs on whatever piece of ass you find!" He's crashing out towards Jemma this time, waiting for his eyes to adjust as his gun is swung this way and that. They can't risk flattening themselves on the ground to avoid being seen because it'll put them at risk of being ripped apart by the Walkers that are making their way towards the man with the megaphone.

"Shut up and get over here! Don't you wanna give Skye a proper welcome to the group?" Someone from further along shouts his way. The man moves away like a dog smelling meat. Jemma's pressed up against the thick trunk of a tree but she can't bring herself to move yet. Fitz urges her on, peering around from his own tree, and the others are waiting impatiently for her to get on with following them but she can't.

This isn't a book. Jemma looks over towards the body of the man Natasha killed. All she needs is a few seconds of mad, unreasonable courage. She breathes. This isn't a book. She isn't a heroine. There's nothing remotely special about her. This isn't a book. Jemma breathes more deeply and staggers out quickly into too close proximity of the fence where anyone could see her. Her fingers fumble over the body. He has a knife, a compass, some cigarettes, and exactly what she'd been hoping and dreading to find. No one does this amount of damage to structures without explosives.

"Jemma!" Fitz hisses sharply.

This isn't a book but she doesn't need a book. What she needs right now—she rolls it in her fingers shakily because there's no way that she's really considering doing this—is a grenade.

"Start running." Jemma whispers back. He stares at her. She doesn't need to explain. Of course she doesn't. He always understands. Immediately he backs away and returns to the others to start encouraging them further away from the ruins of their camp. They don't seem to ask questions. Just a few seconds of courage. One, two, three...

"Hey assholes!" Jemma screams at the top of her lungs, pulls the pin from the grenade and lobs it in the direction of where she's sees a man silhouetted on top of the walkway along the fence. By the time the panicked shouting and haphazard gunfire is cut short by the explosion, she's already crashing through the woods after the others. There's more commotion behind her but she doesn't dare look back to see the casualties of her handiwork.


End file.
